


Some Rules Deserve to be Broken

by Konoha_bakery



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternative Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto), Asexual Hatake Kakashi, Fuuinjutsu Master Umino Iruka, Fuuinjutsu Master Uzumaki Naruto, Gen, No Uchiha Massacre, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Reincarnation, SI-OC, invavsive memories from diferent life, it might not come up but thats how I se him, main character just wants to watch the chaos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29323269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Konoha_bakery/pseuds/Konoha_bakery
Summary: “Some rules are too stupid to be followed. If I followed all the rules, I would now be an apprentice carpenter as my parents wanted me to and wouldn’t have met you.” Jiro shrugged back at Naruto. “Also, if you followed all the rules you wouldn’t do all the pranks and life would be too boring.”
Comments: 18
Kudos: 84
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts, Into another world





	1. How do you make friends again?

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first attempt at writing fanfiction, and any fiction for that metter. I can't claim to know what I'm doing but I wanted to at least do something with it. Fair warning, I'm not sure where I'm going with this yet.

Moving to a new place wasn’t easy but it was especially not easy for a 6-year-old.  
This was the kind of situation Jiro found himself in anyway. Takuboku Jiro moved with his family to Konoha from a village in northern Fire country, hoping to get a business going. His father and older brother were carpenters and, apparently, Ninja village was a good place for those, after all ninjas broke stuff a lot, didn’t they? Being away from the boring village, in the middle of nowhere, would have been more fun if it hadn’t been for the fact that they were moving to a different village in the middle of nowhere.

As days passed Jiro strolled around the village hoping to make friends but being the new kid didn’t make it easy. Also, Jiro just didn’t know how to make friends. As per usual, he walked by the ninja academy, but it seems different today. As he gets closer, he noticed a lot of kids his age, with parents or on their own, in front of the academy. Curiosity won and Jiro made it closer to see what the commotion was about. In the middle of the yard, he noticed several people in the green vests he was starting to associate with ninja that he’s sees everywhere around this village. As he looked around one of them approached him. Jiro barely noticed the man, well teenager really, with a scar across the bridge of his nose and hair in a spiky bun before he spoke.

“Are you here to sign up for the academy?”

“Oh!” Jiro said, startled. “So that’s what this is about?”

“Yeah!” the man replied with a smile, “New semester starts next month so kids your age are here to sign up. Is that not why you’re here?”

“I’m new to the town, I didn’t know anyone can apply.”

“Well, we’re testing chakra potential of kids before we allow them in. Are your parents around?”

“They are still unpacking and settling down” Jiro shrugged with hands in his pockets. “Could I try the chakra thing too? I would rather be a ninja than a carpenter.”

“Sure, if you want, you can join the kids over there” the man pointed to a group of kids near the building.

“Thank you, shinobi-san” Jiro said with a quick nod and run away to the group.

Hoping to make friends, he approached the group but as per usual, he got shy and stood to the side hoping for someone to start a conversation. However, before that could happen a different man in a ninja uniform approached the group and called for attention.

“Hello kids, my name is Seno Tadahito. You can call me Seno-sensei.” He introduced himself. “Follow me to find out if you have it in you, what you need to become a great ninja of Konoha.”

With this the group entered the building and moved into a large classroom. Seno-sensei gave them a grand speech about being a ninja and then explained the day in detail before dividing them into groups. Jiro’s group got sent outside with yet another young teacher, seriously they couldn’t be older than Jiro’s brother and that just felt weird. They started by running around the field behind the academy. The teacher said it was to see their stamina. Jiro didn’t mind running but running in circles around the field was quite boring. After this, they went back and changed with second group. This time Seno-sensei stayed with them in the classroom and answered any questions while the man/teenager/teacher person with the scar called them in one by one for another test.

When it was Jiro’s turn, he entered a small room and the young teacher motioned for him to sit.

“So, what do you think so far? Still interested in being a ninja?” The man asked with honest curiosity. “What is your name by the way?”

“Takuboku Jiro. I still think it’s better than being a carpenter.” Jiro said with a smile. “And maybe I’ll find friends easier here, than just walking around the village.”

“Oh, Seno-sensei talked about the friendship and comradery again? It is true when you make it through the academy you will make friends for life.” The man laughed. “I am Umino Iruka, if you pass this and your parents agree to you becoming a ninja, you’ll call me Iruka-sensei. Now let’s move on. I will be testing if you have potential to unlock chakra. Don’t be sad if you don’t it is quite rare in civilian born kids, so you are in a disadvantage here.”

At this Jiro’s mood dropped.

“Don’t worry you still might attend; it will be more difficult but if you try hard enough you can still be a ninja. Now please extend your hands over this seal and I will give you a paper to hold.”

Jiro put his hands over the thing Iruka-sensei called a seal. It looked like an ink spill to him, but he was not there to judge. When Iruka sensei gave him the paper to hold and touched the seal; it gloved for a second and then the paper in Jiro’s hand changed colour to dark grey.

“Great news, you have nothing to worry about. You have a good chakra potential.” Iruka sensei said with a generous smile. “We would be happy if you joined the academy.” With this he reached into a stack of papers and handed some to Jiro. “Here is the paperwork. Give it to your parents and if they agree, bring it back here by the end of the month, then you’ll be able to join the academy. Now, go ahead, there are still other kids I have to talk to. See you later Jiro-kun.”

The day turned very different than Jiro expected but if his parents agreed then this move might turn out to be a good thing after all.

...

Convincing his parents wasn’t an easy task but at the end he got lucky that his parents didn’t know much about ninja life, so they allowed him to join.

And so, slowly, first day of his new school came, and he walked into a room full of kids his age. The noise was a bit overwhelming, so he just walked in and looked around. There was a kid in the back sleeping at the desk with a ponytail similar to Iruka sensei. He noticed a few kids wearing symbols of various clans that he recognised and some that he didn’t recognise. A bunch of girls were gawking at a kid with dark hair that look kinda constipated. The symbol on the boy’s clothes marked him as an Uchiha. Jiro’s eyes scanned the room for an empty seat and found one near the door in a row that was empty at the time.

As he was settling down to wait, the door opened and a kid with the brightest blond hair he has ever seen in an orange jumpsuit, with what looked like whisker marks on his cheeks, entered the room. It also turned out he didn’t need to build up the courage to ask him for a name cause the kid stood proudly in front of the classroom and made everyone know it immediately.

“I am Uzumaki Naruto, the future Hokage of Konoha, dattebayo!”

The room was a mixture of reaction but to Jiro’s surprise not many were positive. Many laughed, others just scoffed. But Naruto continued beaming and sat down in the first row.

When Seno-sensei finally entered, the room was almost full, and most spaces were taken; except the two on either side of Naruto. A girl with short brown hair and green eyes sat next to Jiro but only talked to her friend on her other side.

‘Well, I guess I’m not going to be making friends that easily.’ Thought Jiro.

After the roll call, the lectures started and Jiro felt like something didn’t add up but couldn’t figure out what. And so, the days went. After about a week, Jiro finally talked to the girls sitting next to him but they didn’t really care about being friends, so he just paid attention to class and tried to observe everyone else. Few days later, Jiro finally realised what felt so weird the whole time. Seno-sensei completely ignored Naruto. It didn’t matter how much Naruto put his hand up or tried to get noticed, Seno-sensei only noticed him when he was doing mischief. After a month, the places in front where Naruto sat the first day were taken by different kids and he sat alone in the back. Around that time Seno-sensei told them he was leaving, and Iruka-sensei was replacing him as their homeroom teacher.

Time passed and Jiro enjoyed the academy, he mainly liked geography, maths, and history but other subjects were also fine. He also talked to a few more kids in the class, Takeshi and Hiro were the the only two other civilian born boys in the class but they weren’t very friendly, so he only talked to them a little. When Iruka became their main teacher not much changed. Naruto was still mostly ignored and Iruka probably believed that if you say something louder it made it more truth but at least he was treating everyone fairly.

The problems came when they started taijutsu. He just wasn’t good at spars, actually, to be fair, he was terrible at taijutsu, and afraid of spars.

First marked taijutsu spar got announced at the end of their third month and it made Jiro nervous. And Mizuki-sensei who was there to instruct them on taijutsu was useless. As per usual, he took his place next to Naruto during taijutsu class and put his mind into full motion. He needed to find someone to help him with taijutsu. As he was thinking about this, Mizuki passed him, pointing out a problem in his stance, but didn’t say anything about how to improve it, useless, luckily Jiro noticed what he said about the same thing to Sasuke (the Uchiha kid as he learnt) so he knew roughly what to do. Surprisingly, he took Naruto aside to help him more, surprising, because he always stared at Naruto with pure hatred when the kid couldn’t see him. Jiro observed this new development with interest and suspicion. And he noticed something wrong, the “improvements” Mizuki showed Naruto were, actually, making it worse for Naruto.

‘this is not right; we are all supposed to be comrades. Why is he putting Naruto into stances he pointed out to Sasuke as wrong? Naruto isn’t bad at sparring this won’t help him!’ Jiro thought, and it clicked. He would get Naruto to help him; and it might also help Naruto.

After Mizuki-sensei (bleh) left, Jiro made his way to Naruto.

“Hi Naruto, I’m Jiro” he started and with a deep breath he quickly continued: “CouldYouPleaseHelpMeWithTaijutsuImAfraidOfFailingTheExam?”

Naruto stared at him with wide eyes but then he frowned.

“Nobody wats anything from me! You just want to make fun of me like the others. Why don’t you ask Sasuke he’s so special, that teme, dattebayo.”

Jiro just rubbed his shoulder and thought of what to say.

“I… I don’t want to ask him, or other clan kids… and no, I don’t want to make fun of you. I think we make similar mistakes, but you win much more spars and I always lose. I want your help because you also don’t have anyone older to help you cause you are an orphan if what Sakura said is truth.”

Naruto just stared at him.

“I… I can help you with other classes I’m decent in Maths and stuff…”

“You mean it?” Naruto jumped in with a smile. “You would really train with me and help me with homework?”

“Y… yes? I don’t see a problem in it. If you don’t mind?”

“But won’t your parents protest? Every time I try making a friend their parents tell them to keep away from me” Naruto said with a small voice.

“Well… I don’t have to tell them if you think that? We are new to the village, so I don’t know why that’s a thing…”

Jiro got interrupted by a hug he did not expect, from Naruto. Naruto let go and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Sorry, I don’t get people talking to me on their own usually.”

“I don’t mind, do you have a place in mind where we could train? I don’t know the village that well yet.” Jiro decided to move the conversation elsewhere, but he was secretly happy about making a friend.

“Sure, dattebayo” Naruto replied with a smile that would probably tear Jiro’s face in half.

And so, a friendship started. They met after academy to work on taijutsu and sparing almost every day and every other day Jiro would go to Naruto’s little apartment and help him with other subjects. On one of these days in the clearing where they usually trained Jiro brought up Mizuki again.

“Something is fishy about Mizuki-sensei.”

“Why do you think so? He actually helps me with taijutsu sometimes, like today, dattebayo.” Said Naruto with a disapproving look.

“I know but that part of the issue…”

“Oh, come on at least he helps!” interrupted Naruto.

“Let me finish! I think he showed you the wrong moves. I was watching him help Kiba who had the same problem and he basically showed him the opposite moves. And then Kiba beat you for the first time.” Jiro said, deep in thought.

“What?” Naruto gapped.

“Yeah, I think he really doesn’t like you. Why are people so weird around you anyway? I mentioned you to my parents and they forbade me from meeting you again…” the last sentence was said quietly without realising Jiro said it out loud, so Naruto heard it.

“So, you won’t be meting me anymore.” Naruto said more than asked sadly.

“What? Oh no, no, no! I just won’t tell them.”

“But wont you get into trouble? You should follow the rules.”

“Some rules are too stupid to be followed. If I followed all the rules, I would now be an apprentice carpenter as my parents wanted me to and wouldn’t have met you.” Jiro shrugged back at Naruto. “Also, if you followed all the rules you wouldn’t do all the pranks and the life would be too boring.”

Naruto beamed at this and so they continued training and trying to piece together what they did well and when they should ignore Mizuki sensei. It eventually turned into planning pranks that would make Mizuki-sensei miserable.

That evening Jiro asked his parents about Naruto again.

“Why did you tell me not to play with Naruto?”

“That came out of nowhere, Jiro. Don’t question it just stay away from the kid!” was his father’s only reply.

“We’re in the same class, I can’t really avoid him.”

“Honey, people in the village say he is nothing but trouble and those marks on his face are a sign of great evil. Just, don’t talk to him, its safer that way. Now, Kenta, how’s your new girlfriend?” with this his mum changed the subject and all the attention was on his older brother again.

This asked for some research. Jiro was simply too curious to let it go. However, he would have to wait a little as exams were coming and he wanted to pass his first year at the academy.

He passed in the middle of the class with Naruto close to the bottom but still passing.

The first time after the academy year ended, that he was in Naruto’s apartment he brought it up again.

“Do you know why people are so annoying around you?”

“Jiji says they just don’t know how to approach kids.”

“That’s stupid. Who do you mean by jiji anyway, you mention him a lot but you live on your own?”

“Oh, Hokage jiji is not my real grandpa, but is probably closest I have to a family and he’s why I want to be a Hokage, so everybody in the village has to acknowledge me, dattebayo.” Naruto proclaimed proudly.

“Did he at lest tell you about your family?”

“No, and he doesn’t like me asking so I stopped.” This brought the mood of the room down.

“Well time to do some research then!” Jiro stood up and packed his stuff. “we’re going to the archives.”

“I don’t think they let me in there, dattebayo” Naruto deadpanned.

“well then I’m going to the archives, and you’re going to prank the grocery shop that was rude last week. It counts as distraction.”

At this Naruto perked up, and his smirk could send shivers down the spines of every civilian.

…

If Naruto was close to the Hokage his parents were most likely high-ranking shinobi so they’re files wouldn’t be available to a pre-genin. Luckily, Jiro is aa recent immigrant and he already spent a lot of time in the civilian archives with his mum, too much for a child, but he didn’t mind. He knew that even shinobi children need to have their birth certificate there, and other documents about Naruto’s family should be there too. Stuff like marriage certificates, immigration papers, death certificates. If it wasn’t there than it was highly classified and it made this even more interesting. Plus, Jiro even had a good excuse to be there.

“Good afternoon ma’am, I’m Takuboku Jiro. I’m here to look for my ancestors in the archives.” Jiro said as politely as he could.

“Oh hello, that is not a common name here in Konoha. Why do you think you’ll find anything?” the clerk asked without paying much attention.

“Some of my family on my mothers’ side is said to have lived here before, they’re name was Uzawa.” Best excuses were the true ones and his mother’s maiden name has never been more useful than at that moment.

“Well, I’m busy so don’t make a mess, I’m putting your name down so I will find you if you break something.

“Of course, I’ll make sure to tidy up after me.” Jiro smiled as he was let into the archive. This was honestly too easy, the village should up the security around there.

When he found the Uzawa files he just continued further because he already went through those before anyway.

“Uzuba,… Uzudori,… Uzukai,… Uzumaki. Here it is!” he took the box of scrolls off the shelf and sat down on the floor. It was very dusty, nobody touched it in years probably.

There was a lot of old scrolls, some maybe even older than the village, which was surprising, but only a few newer ones. He started with the newer ones. And he lucked out. The first one was exactly what he was looking for. The birth certificate of one Uzumaki Naruto. It unfortunately wasn’t as helpful as he would have hoped. Father’s name was totally blacked out, mother’s first name too but her surname was Uzumaki.

‘hmm…’ Jiro’s mind was racing; it was better than nothing and there were more scrolls.

The other newer scroll was a marriage certificate. This time with both names blacked out fully. Last new scroll was the most surprising one. It was a death certificate. A confirmation that one Uzumaki Kushina died on the same day that Naruto was born. It looked like a bit of an oversight to not black it out on that one but good for the investigation. It might as well have been a confirmation. Unfortunately, only other information on that one was that everything associated with her would be under shinobi administration, which meant no access for civilians.

With this, Jiro noted down the name and moved onto the older scrolls. He found some real estate papers from the early years of the village; quite a lot of property under the name Uzumaki actually. And then he found two immigration papers, one from the first year of the village existence, for one Uzumaki Mito of Uzushiogakure, with a note that refers her further info to be put under the Senju Clan after her marriage to one Senju Hashirama.

“Holy fire! He’s family with the shodaime Hokage” Jiro exclaimed to himself.

Second one was for Uzumaki Kushina of Uzushiogakure. And wasn’t that interesting. What even is Uzushio? When he noted all this down and looked through all the other scrolls. He packed them back and made his way to Naruto’s apartment.

…

Naruto just stared at him with open mouth, as he showed him the notes and explain what he thought.

“So…so you believe my parents were ninja; and my mum died the day I was born, and Uzumaki isn’t just a random name?” Naruto beamed, then frowned, then smiled again. “I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. I know my mum didn’t just abandon me, but at the same time, she is dead.”

“We can try to find her grave at least, and maybe there will be photos somewhere. Also, we have to look up that Uzushiogakure place!” Jiro pointed out but something was telling him there would not be any good news.

“But why wouldn’t jiji tell me it was her name, dattebayo.”

“Hmm… you should probably keep it secret for now.”

“What?!? NO! I finally have family! I can’t keep them secret! Dattebayo!” Naruto almost screamed.

“But the Hokage kept it secret. You might get into trouble for this.”

Naruto’s face was showing his mind trying to figure this out before he spoke. “Don’t you say some rules are too stupid to be followed? I think this is one of them.”

“I agree. But we should still be careful.” Jiro said, staring at Naruto. “We should find out more and then you can corner the Hokage next time you ask him. You’ll ask the right questions say the right things and he’ll basically won’t be able to lie to you if he really likes you, right?”

At this Naruto perked up and just read all the notes again.

“Naruto? How did the prank go? You got to your flat earlier than I expected.”

“They didn’t catch me because I’m so awesome!” replied Naruto with a foxy grin. “I got his shop front covered in…”

He got interrupted by someone banging at the door.

“…orange….”

More banging and this time also Iruka sensei’s voice screaming. “NARUTO!”

“…paint…*gulp*”

“I guess you didn’t actually run away.” said Jiro quietly looking at the door with bulging eyes.

“Should we run?” whispered Naruto.

“OPEN THE DOOR NARUTO I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE” came the answer to that from the door.

“Opening the door is probably safer” Jiro whispered back.

With a resigned sigh they braced themselves for the wrath of Iruka sensei and Naruto opened the door. Iruka-sensei, actually, started to warm up to Naruto during the year and even took him for ramen now and then. So, angry Iruka at Naruto’s apartment after a prank wasn’t that surprising.

Apparently, Jiro was a surprise for Iruka though.

“Oh… Jiro, you’re also here? Did you take part in this prank too?”

“What prank sensei?” Jiro tried but by the look at Iruka’s face he wasn’t fooling anyone. So, he just rubbed his shoulder while Naruto was rubbing the back of his neck.

“I didn’t see you as the type to pull pranks with Naruto, Jiro.”

“He didn’t actually do anything with the prank, he was helping me with other things, dattebayo.” Naruto said as he looked into Iruka’s eyes.

“Well, it was my idea for you to pull a prank though…”

“Dude! I’m trying to help you here, dattebayo!” Naruto said as he turned to Jiro.

“This looks like something you should tell me more about you two.” Was Iruka’s way to return the attention to himself.

Jiro and Naruto exchanged a look and a whole conversation passed between them in a moment. Iruka just looked at them and realised that he never noticed the two being friends before. He got back to the matter, though, when Jiro just sighed as if in defeat and Naruto decided to talk.

“We wanted to learn more about me, so Jiro went to the civilian archives and I pulled a prank so nobody can say it was me.”

“That’s an interesting idea but why would anyone think you were in the archives?” said Iruka with a voice that was dangerously close to his lecture voice.

“Well, it was easier than waiting around” Naruto confessed.

Jiro looked sheepish at this and Iruka just let out a resigned sigh.

“Well, I want to hear why you did it and what you found out to make sure you didn’t break any laws Jiro.” Iruka’s tone didn’t leave any room for discussion so they just let him in and went through everything they found out and all their hypotheses.

“That’s all quite interesting boys, but why are you so interested in Naruto’s parents Jiro-kun?” Started Iruka when they finished.

“Naruto is a great guy, yet most villagers treat him terribly, even you were ignoring him when you started teaching us” Iruka looked ashamed at that but didn’t deny it. ”So, I wanted to find out why. Also, I was curious.”

“I admit I was not fair towards Naruto,” stated Iruka, and Naruto looked at him with sad eyes. “however, I can confirm it has nothing to do with your parents. Even though I never knew who your parents were, I assumed that your surname came from your father. I am sorry Naruto, but I also have to ask you not to look into it anymore.” said Iruka in a resigned tone. “I know the reason why most people treat you like this, but I cannot tell you anything more, because it is an S-class secret, and nobody is allowed to tell you.”

Naruto starred at Iruka after this and Jiro started to get a weird headache. It was like the headache was trying to tell him something; and wasn’t that odd.

“You two have to promise me not to look into this!” Iruka sensei turned to Jiro and Naruto in turn in full out lecture mode. “Now! Both of you! Promise me you won’t look into this!”

Both Naruto and Jiro looked like they want to protest but the way Iruka-sensei said it, made them just drop their heads and agree.

“I promise I wont look into why everybody hates me.” Said Naruto in almost a whisper with tears threatening to spill any second.

“Jiro?”

“I promise I won’t do any research into it. But I will still try to peace together whatever I already know.”

“I can accept that” with this Iruka let out a breath and looked at Naruto.

“I can help you with the other things though” continued Iruka “I am sorry Naruto, I acted badly towards you for a long time because I was as ignorant as other villagers, but I see you now as my precious student and a future great ninja of Konoha. Will you ever be able to forgive me” said Iruka While deeply bowing.

Naruto just started crying and hugged Iruka like his life depended on it. Jiro just tried to understand his headache, but this scene made him smile, nonetheless.

“So, how about we have some dinner and I tell you what I know about the stuff you found tomorrow.” Said Iruka once he got out of Naruto’s embrace.

“I have to go home for dinner, my parents still don’t know I’m friends with Naruto.”

“Why so?” asked Iruka.

“Well, they just accepted what the villagers told them without trying to meet Naruto first. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jiro said as he got up to leave them for the day. “I usually tell them I spend the time with Shikamaru or Yuna-chan.”

“Interesting choice, any reason for that?” interrogated Iruka.

Jiro paused at the door, thought about it and then proclaimed: “Well, Yuna-chan’s parents are busy shinobi and Shikamaru is a clan heir so my parents are unlikely to talk to either of their parents and if they ask them directly, Shikamaru is smart enough to understand I’m hiding something and not sell me out. I don’t know about Yuna-chan but I trust her.”

That night Jiro had dreams about foxes, a man that looked like an older Naruto, hundreds of young Narutos fighting Mizuki-sensei, and Iruka-sensei getting hurt by Mizuki. When he woke up, he remembered only tiny snippets of his dreams, but something was telling him it was important and more than just a dream.


	2. Strangers be strange

Iruka-sensei stayed true to his promise and at the first day of the school break they met in the library. The desk clerks were not happy about seeing Naruto at first, but they learned quickly to accept him there if they didn’t want to call the wrath of Iruka-sensei upon themselves.

Naruto surprised Iruka by his enthusiasm about all the books.

“I wouldn’t think about you as a reader Naruto.” Iruka sensei said to Naruto who came to the table with an armful of books.

“I never could get my hands on my own books before, dattebayo.” Was Naruto’s nonchalant reaction before he started reading a book about the Konoha clans.

“He reads anything that he finds interesting, but if he decides its boring nothing in the world will make him read it” Jiro shrugged and took out his notebook.

Iruka looked at his two students and with a shake of his head brought up the subject of why they were there. He opened an old book describing the ninja villages.

“Here it is. Uzushiogakure.” He moved the book so both his students could see what was in it. “One of the oldest hidden villages, in the land of whirlpools, a small Island country between the Land of Fire, and Land of Water.”

Naruto and Jiro read the pages in silent admiration. The illustrations showed a beautiful village of white marble with red and gold markings on every surface. In a hidden bay surrounded by tall cliffs. Canals, bridges, and towers on every picture created a feeling of calm power.

“However,” Iruka-sensei continued with a sad tone, “There is a reason why I looked for an old book. The village was destroyed during the Second Shinobi War. Nobody was able to enter the ruin since then. There were no known survivors and if anyone made it out, they went into hiding. To this day, it is one of Konoha’s biggest regret, how we let our ally fall before we could help.” Iruka lectured, his two students who paid more attention than ever in the class. “Uzushio swirl on all our uniforms is meant to represent that we will not let the memory of our first ally be forgotten.” Iruka finished by pointing at the read spiral on his uniform.

“Uzumaki, was the founding clan of that village as well as the largest one. According to what Jiro found your mother moved here shortly before the destruction.”

“This says they were known for their fuuinjutsu. What is that? I don’t remember you talking about it at the academy.” Jiro asked and Naruto looked more interested than ever.

“We don’t really teach fuuinjutsu at the academy, we’ll learn some basics next year but mostly just to recognise a real explosive tag from a dud.” Iruka returned while scratching his chin. “It’s the art of sealing. Explosive tags, storage scrolls, and barriers are the basics, but it is said that a true master could do almost anything with the right seal. However, seal users are exceedingly rare. The fourth Hokage is the best seal master Konoha ever had and he said himself that he has nothing on the masters from Uzushio.”

Jiro and Naruto exchanged a look that said they both were thinking the same.

“Will you teach us? Please!? Iruka sensei?” said both at the same time.

“-dattebayo” added Naruto.

Luckily for them Iruka couldn’t really say no to Naruto so it didn’t take long to convince him to teach them the basics.

…

They continued to meet every few days during the break, either in the library, Iruka’s apartment or Naruto’s apartment. One of these day Iruka was discussing storage scroll mechanics with Naruto, who took onto sealing like fish to water, when Jiro found a rare, coloured picture of the fourth Hokage in a book of notable seal master. When he looked at the picture the only thing, he could do was lift the book and look from the picture to Naruto and back repeatedly. He could feel the odd headache coming back.

“Ne, Iruka sensei? Can you come and look at this?”

Iruka and Naruto paused their discussion and Iruka made his way to Jiro. Jiro just positioned the book so Iruka could see both the picture and Naruto. Iruka blinked rapidly and moved his eyes from the picture to Naruto repeatedly. Naruto just stared at them like they’ve gone crazy.

“Will any of you tell me what’s going on, dattebayo?” exclaimed Naruto and Iruka and Jiro could only stare at each other.

“Um… Naruto… when’s the last time you looked into mirror?” was the only thing Jiro managed to say.

“In the morning, duh.” Confusion clear in Naruto’s voice.

Jiro just turned the book towards him but covered the name of who was on the picture.

“Who is that? He looks like me?!” Naruto said while jumping up from his chair.

At this Jiro removed his hand and he thought Naruto’s eyeballs would just roll out of his sockets, how wide they were open.

“This might just be a coincidence.” Iruka tried to argue but his voice betrayed that he also didn’t believe that.

The rest of the day they spent in silence exchanging looks. No one knew what to say.

“I have to go talk to Jiji.” Was the first thing Naruto said after it was clear no one else would say anything.

“Yeah. You know both your parents now; you deserve an explanation, at least, for this.” Jiro said and Iruka didn’t argue.

“I can go with you if you want” was Iruka’s only comment.

That night the odd dreams came back to Jiro. He saw a woman with beautiful red hair and purple eyes talking to the man he now knew was the fourth Hokage, them being in the academy together when they were young, the woman/girl getting kidnaped but saved but young fourth Hokage, and the two of them dying together with a loving smile next to a crying baby with whisker marks on cheeks.

...

Next day Jiro was called into the Hokage office together with Naruto and Iruka and had to sign an agreement that neither of them would talk about the information to anyone, because it was a S-ranked secret.

Outwardly not much changed but Jiro could see that Naruto didn’t have to force his smiles as much. Jiro didn’t change the way he acted around him and neither has Iruka-sensei, but once academy started again Iruka got into a few, read a lot, arguments with teachers that treated Naruto unfairly. To Jiro’s surprise Naruto was the one who asked him to stop. He was ok with only Iruka knowing and he said that this would be the greatest prank in history. That he would prank the whole village by making them see how amazing he was before and only when he was a Hokage himself he would release this knowledge and bask in the chaos.

They continued learning fuuinjutsu from Iruka sensei, who turned out to be one of the few seal users in the village and an expert on barrier seals. Iruka-sensei made it official by creating a fuuinjutsu club at the academy and a few students joined them. Only a few stuck around though. Once a week they would stay after the academy as the official fuuinjutsu club and every Friday they would go to Iruka’s or Naruto’s apartment after a stop at Ichiraku and practice seals. Naruto was advancing in leaps and bounds. Jiro was enjoying it but also, he knew he probably wouldn’t dedicate his life to fuuinjutsu. 

In later months his headaches were getting more common, particularly around anyone from the Uchiha clan. One day after a particularly bad set of nightmares full of blood, red eyes and weird old dudes stealing eyes; he was barely paying attention to Iruka-sensei’s explanation of a simple barrier seal.

“I’m sorry Iruka-sensei, Naruto, I think I’ll go home earlier today. I’m not feeling very well.” He said during a break in Iruka’s explanation.

“No problem, see you in the academy on Monday.” Iruka said as Jiro started to leave.

It was already getting dark and there was barely anyone on the streets; and Jiro was walking deep in thought trying not to think about his nightmares. He almost didn’t notice a figure that showed up in front of him.

“Oh… Hello?” Jiro scanned the figure. They were dressed in a black cloak, with a white porcelain mask covering their face. Something about the mask rubbed Jiro the wrong way though; it didn’t look like a proper ANBU mask.

“Takuboku Jiro, you are wanted for a meeting with my master.” The figure said in a monotone voice.

“Um… yes, why do they want me?”

“That is not important.”

“Can I go home for dinner first? I can make my way to the Hokage office afterwards.”

“You are to come immediately, and this is not a Hokage summons.”

“Who, then?”

“That is not important you will find out later.”

“So, you’re not ANBU?”

“I am an ANBU operative.”

“But you said this is not a Hokage summon.”

“Indeed.”

“So, you’re not ANBU.”

“I am.”

“But ANBU only answers to the Hokage if someone else needed me they would send the Uchiha police force.”

“That is factually incorrect.” The figure tried.

“I’m a kid not an idiot! And I pay attention in the academy. I’m a civilian so you have no authority over me.” Jiro was getting really nervous. This, probably, fake ANBU was trying to make him go somewhere and he knew he has no chance of escaping them.

“You are the jinchuuriki’s friend and so you are to come with me regardless.” The figure started to reach for Jiro when a familiar voice saved him.

“Jiro here you are… Hello?” Jiro heard Iruka say behind him as the figure froze and quickly shunshined away. Jiro let out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding.

“Iruka-sensei!”

“Jiro you left this at my place.” Iruka handed him his academy notebook and pencil case. “Why was there an ANBU here?”

Jiro grabbed Iruka’s vest to ground himself and stop shaking.

“I don’t think he was an ANBU. He said I was Naruto’s friend and I need to go with him to meet his master, who is not the Hokage.” Jiro changed the jinchuuriki word for Naruto because they couldn’t mean anyone else really. He would have to look into what does jinchuuriki mean later.

“Are you saying there might be someone impersonating an ANBU in the village? We need to tell this to the Hokage as soon as possible.” Iruka put his hand on Jiro’s shoulder. “Are you good to come to the Hokage tower with me now?”

They made their way to the tower and Jiro managed to release his grip of Iruka’s vest as they got close. Unfortunately, they got turned away because the Hokage was in an important meeting and wouldn’t be free anytime soon.

“It’s getting late, and you’re probably hungry do you want something to eat?” Iruka said when they made it back outside. “Ichiraku?”

“Thank you, sensei, but would you mind something else, I have ramen often enough with Naruto.” Jiro smiled back at Iruka. “Would you mind the takoyaki from the stand on the way to the Uchiha district?”

They got their Takoyaki and sat on a bench in silence while eating. Jiro was getting better until a person walked past them and his head felt like a high-grade explosive tag going off. He dropped the rest of the food and run to the person all to the confusion of Iruka.

He grabbed the person by the sleeve and dodged a strike aimed slightly too high. It is not a good idea to startle a ninja.

“Shisui! You can’t go!” Jiro started “He’ll… he’ll steal your eye.” Panic clear in his voice, “he wants you all dead! He doesn’t want peace, the man with bandages! He already stole eyes! He’ll use Itachi to kill them all you have to go to the Hokage and stop Danzo!” Jiro almost collapsed from pain in his head.

“What are you talking about?” Jiro heard Iruka say behind him. “Shisui, you know Jiro?”

“No, Iruka-chan Who is this” Shisui replied with something that might have been panic in his voice.

“A student of mine. Do you know what he’s talking about, Shisui?”

Jiro held onto Shisui with one hand and other hand was clenching at his face. He starred into Shisui’s red spinning eyes and he probably showed more in that one look than anything he said.

“It’s not a genjutsu! Iruka, get Inoichi-sama and come to the Hokage office!”

Iruka tried to protest but Shisui was gone with Jiro in a bizarrely quick shunshin.

…

If their sudden appearance in the office startled the Hokage, he did not show any sign of it.

“Shisui-kun, Jiro-kun, what brings you two here?”

“Hokage-sama, this kid seems to know more about our situation than should be possible.”

“It’s all part of his plan” Jiro breathed out, “he created the hatred towards Uchiha so he could control them.” He continued slowly. “But he can’t control them, so he wants them all dead.”

The Hokage just starred at the two of them.

“It is not a genjutsu, I checked, I also sent Iruka to get Inoichi-sama. He stopped me on the way to meet Danzou-sama, who asked to see me before the plan today.” Shisui told the hokage.

Jiro just slid to his knees, the pain in the head not relieving.

“Danzou shouldn’t have been asking to see you Shisui.” Hokage said as he put his hands to his chin in a thinking pose. “I’ll send someone with you ahead to see him…”

“No!” Jiro Interrupted “He will steal his eye. And it will break Itachi.”

This brought silence into the room that only got broken by Iruka and Yamanaka Inoichi coming to the office.

“What is going on, Hokage-sama?” Inoichi asked, looking between the people in the room.

“There seems to be something going one in the mind of this young man” the Hokage said pointing with his whole hand to Jiro. “I believe a mind walk might clear some confusion.”

Inoichi looked at Jiro who was still kneeling with hands on his head, clearly in pain.

“Hi, I’m Yamanaka Inoichi.” He said calmly as he got close to Jiro. “How about we sit on the couch over there and I’ll see if I can help you.”

Jiro looked up at him and nodded slowly. He got up and tried to make it to the couch. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked at Iruka. “Where is Naruto?”

Iruka looked at him, quickly relayed what happened earlier to the Hokage and was sent to look for the boy.

Inoichi got to work as soon as Iruka left and the ANBU on guard secured the room. When he got out of Jiro’s mind after long 30 minutes. Jiro was barely awake to pay attention to what he was saying, but at least the headache was gone. He laid down on the couch and did his best to pay attention to what everyone else in the room was saying. Lucky for him, they didn’t care or thought he wouldn’t understand it, so he listened.

“He is and interesting case.” Inoichi looked at the Hokage and sighed before starting. “He is a case of reincarnation, but it looks like his previous life was somewhere where our world is just a story.” Everyone looked at Inoichi disbelievingly. “Normally a reincarnation would not remember anything from their previous lives and would only leave a sign in the chakra signature, but in Jiro-kun’s case it appears that knowledge from his previous life break to the surface when he re-lives situations from those stories.” Inoichi said and then frowned.

“Hokage-sama, if what I saw in this boys mind is even close to the truth than I have to say I’m disappointed. Shimura Danzou suggested the clan relocation after the kyubi attack, and we went with it not seeing problems. Except, the ostracising of the Uchiha clan in recent years can be linked to this and to Shimura san’s attempts and lies.”

“I am sorry that is what you take away from this Inoichi san…” hokage started.

“No, Hokage sama that is only my conclusion. What I saw in the boys mind is much worse.” He looked at Shisui with a sadness in his eyes. “If the boy didn’t stop Shisui from continuing the plan to mind control the Uchiha, Danzou would attempt to steal both of his eyes and succeed in stealing one.” After a short pause Inoichi continued “He would overpower you by using a forbidden Uchiha technique thanks to the eyes he already stole and implanted into himself.”

Jiro almost chocked on the wave of killing intent that came off from Shisui.

“Shisui, also please come to my office as soon as possible, according to the boy’s memories you would take out your other eye and give it to Itachi for safe keeping and then throw yourself off a cliff. I think we need to have a talk about self-preservation!”

...

This startled Shisui and the Hokage while Inoichi continued.

“This would give Itachi mangekyo but Danzo would manage to manipulate him to kill every Uchiha except for Sasuke or Danzou would kill Sasuke.” Inoichi looked around the room before continuing. “He would enlist a help of a rogue Uchiha in a mask that is behind the Kyubi attack and later join the Akatsuki as a rogue-nin to protect the name of the village.”

After a moment of silence Inoichi finished. “I didn’t get anything else right now, but it is possible as time passes, he will get more of these. They will come as visions, dreams, and feelings but not as actual memories. I believe I can work with him to get as much info about possible future threats as possible.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment before Iruka came in with a terrified expression.

“Naruto is gone!” were Iruka’s first words “there are signs of struggle in his apartment.”

With a quick sign, all ANBU on guard kneeled before the Hokage.

“Hound, take Tiger and Cat, go with Shisui and make sure Danzo doesn’t start anything with the Uchiha clan. Protect Shisui and every Uchiha!” he turned to another one, “Frog, take all available trackers on ANBU and look for Naruto.” With a quick turn to the last one, he finished “Weasel, alert ANBU and the Uchiha police force that a traitor might be targeting the clan. Dismissed!”

Jiro looked at the ANBU leaving and felt a ping of recognition for two of them, ‘shoot, I don’t need another headache now.’

“Inoichi, I believe a meeting of clan heads is in order. Once we make sure Uchiha are safe, we will meet as soon as possible. Iruka-kun, If you don’t mind, please fetch Nara Shikaku for me.”

As Hokage continued to organise everyone around, Jiro finally closed his eyes and gave into sleep.


	3. A Road to Ninja is full of bumps

Waking up in a different place than falling asleep turned out to be an unpleasant feeling for Jiro. Waking up in a hospital of all places even more so. Worst of all, he would need to explain it to his family. To complicate the situation even more, the first people he got to see were the Hokage and Yamanaka Inoichi.

“Good afternoon, Jiro-kun. You managed to sleep through all the troubles of last night.”

It wasn’t what he expected to hear from the Hokage, but he didn’t complain. ‘Wait did he say afternoon?’ “Afternoon?” he voiced as he looked out the window.

“Yes, our mind-walk exhausted you more than I should have allowed” this time it was Inoichi who talked. “Don’t worry your family knows you’re safe, but we can’t let you see them before we have a little chat” he said with a kind smile. Jiro was surprised that Ino’s dad is so cool.

“Indeed.” With this, attention was back at the Hokage who decided to take his time before continuing. And before he could a realisation dawned on Jiro.

“Is Naruto safe?” he asked with a sharp inhale.

“Yes, he was found and returned. He is the room next to yours and Iruka sensei is with him.”

Jiro finally released a breath after the Hokage said that.

“But that is not why we are here. Yesterday your situation led to the release of highly classified information.” Suddenly Jiro found it hard to swallow. “Don’t worry you’re not in trouble.” Hokage might have said it but it didn’t make Jiro feel much better.

“I know you can keep a secret as you proved with the thing you found before the academy year started” Inoichi sent a questioning look to the hokage. Probably realising that the kid in front of him had more classified knowledge than an average clan head.

“Everything that happened yesterday, is to not leave that room. Only those present in my office yesterday are allowed to discuss this and only among themselves. This includes Nara Shikaku Who only arrived after you fell asleep, but his help is important. Not even Naruto is allowed to know. Understood?” given the tone that Hokage finished on, Jiro understood that he does not have the option to break this. Damn, he wants to talk about this.

“Yes, Hokage-sama.” He will find a way to get around this rule eventually.

“Good, now I will leave you here with Inoichi to discuss your particular situation.” With this the Hokage turned and left the room. Once the doors closed again Inoichi sat down next to Jiro’s bed.

“You are Ino’s classmate, am I right?” the older blond said.

“Yes, but I don’t know her very well Inoichi-sama.”

“Don’t worry about the -sama, we’ll be spending more time together so it would get a bit bothersome.” Inoichi started. “Your situation is very special; do you remember what happened yesterday? Can you walk me through everything from when you met Shisui-kun, please?”

Jiro thought about it and started. “I got a terrible headache and saw stuff happening; similar to nightmares I had over the last few days. For some reason I couldn’t hold myself together and reached to Shisui san, who I never met before but knew his name somehow. He took me to the Hokage office and when you showed up you did a Yamanaka thing and went into my mind. I don’t remember anything that happened during that but when you stopped I… knew?... what was going on? Then you said I’m reincarnated and what I saw were memories of a story I knew. Then chaos started and I fell asleep.”

“Pretty much, I won’t tell you what happened after, you will have to find out as any other citizen. What is important though is that it was only a snippet of the memories and I couldn’t access more at that time.” Inoichi paused to let Jiro think.

“We decided that it will be best for all of us to set up some sessions to help you deal with the side-effects. So, I will meet with you in my office above Yamanaka flower shop on Wednesday after the academy, is that ok with you?”

Jiro didn’t see any problem with this, and he wanted to talk about it anyway, so he just nodded.

“Great I’ll leave you to rest for now, I bet your family cannot wait to see you.” Inoichi stood and slowly left. In the door he turned back to Jiro. “You will be released tomorrow morning because it is too late for that today.” With this he left. At least he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life at a psychiatry wing of the hospital.

…

His mother came shortly after and told him what she heard about what happened.

One of the members of the Hokage Council turned out to be a traitor and tried to wipe out the Uchiha clan. Hokage’s Anbu worked with the Uchiha clan and many of the ninja of the village against a secret army dressed like ANBU that the councilman controlled.

Now Jiro at least knew who the fake ANBU wanted him to meet.

There were also rumours about stolen children, unethical experiments, and corruption but the jury was still out on those. When the village forces made it to the Uchiha district it was already in the midst of battle but she talked a lot about how the brave ninja fought against the evil villain.

Luckily, his mum still believed in the brave ninja tales, so he didn’t need to worry about him staying at the academy. But at the same time, he was wondering how was his mum so well informed.

There were losses on both sides and the rest of the fake ANBU only surrendered after the councilman was dead.

She left after about two hours to let his dad and brother know that he is ok and will be coming home tomorrow.

When she left, he finally made his way to Naruto’s room.

He was siting in the bed eating ramen, with Iruka sensei on a chair next to him, seals in hand ready to trap Naruto in a barrier if he tried to escape. Naruto had bandages around the head and the left shoulder but didn’t look to be in pain. Iruka noticed him firs and nodded at him with a smile. Naruto then noticed him and beamed.

“Jiro! You’re ok!”

“Yeah, I only woke up a few hours ago though.” Jiro replied with a small laugh. “I’m glad you’re safe!”

Naruto starred at him but just grinned and pointed his thumb at himself. “Of course, I am the future Hokage and no one can hurt me that easily, I’m too awesome for that, dattebayo.”

They fell into easy conversations and compared what they knew that happened. Naruto even summarised what Iruka sensei told him about the two of them so Jiro didn’t need to come up with a cover story. Apparently, they just got stuck in the Hokage tower once the chaos started and helped carry paperwork around. Naruto then explained what happened to him. It either wasn’t as secret, or Naruto was just good at not revealing too much because Iruka didn’t stop him.

About an hour after Iruka left to find Jiro, a bunch of ANBU-looking ninja showed at Naruto’s apartment and demanded he go with them. When he refused, they knocked him out and took him away, he woke up in a dimly lit cavern tied to a chair. He tried to get out, but they stopped him. He managed to loosen the rope when they weren’t paying attention and when they all left to check what is making a ruckus somewhere close, he got out of the rope and used it to plant a trap at the door of the room he was in, hoping, to catch them when they get back, to steal a kunai or something and find a way out. The trap was almost successful but only caught one of the two people entering. Luckily, they were there to get him out, so they just laughed with him. They took him to hospital to check him over and kept him here although he was fine.

Jiro wasn’t sure if he should believe everything Naruto said but he was happy his friend was safe, so he didn’t question anything, and it sounded believable enough.

When a nurse came to check on Naruto, she sent him back to his room and also made Iruka leave. Both of them would be released in the morning anyway. Iruka only left after putting seals at the window that would prevent Naruto from leaving; he really didn’t trust him to stay in the hospital.

That night, Jiro dreamed about a young man running around screaming “AU, AU, AU” and “Cannon divergence” over, and over again, while falling over himself. It was a rather humorous dream and definitely a good change from the nightmares of the previous nights.

...

In the morning when a nurse came to check on him and she let him know at what time he would be released. He met with Naruto at the corridor and they made their way to the main entrance together. Jiro’s mother was already there, and Naruto paused and turned to leave other way. Jiro noticed this but decided to change the way he avoids talking about Naruto. He grabbed his hand and dragged him to his mum.

“Good morning Mum, this is my friend Naruto, he lives on his own so he should come and have lunch with us.” Jiro said this without letting his mum interrupt him and looked at her expectantly.

“Hmm… I don’t know…” His mum said looking at Naruto’s cheeks.

“It’s not his fault the villagers fear him, he’s my good friend and I don’t like that you judged him before meeting him.”

“I wouldn’t say fear, more hate.” Naruto said quietly.

“Maa, tomato, tomato.”

“You just said tomato twice, Jiro” his mum looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Did I? I guess I’m still tired. So, Is dad home?

“He has work unfortunately. Ah, all right, we have enough food for a guest.” She said and turned to Naruto. “My name is Takuboku Nojiko, I’m Jiro’s mother. Nice to meet you.”

“Uzumaki Naruto, please take care of me.” Naruto said with a radiant smile and a polite bow.

Jiro only let go of Naruto’s arm when he believed he wouldn’t run away.

Naruto was as polite as he possibly could, but even when he slipped Ms Takuboku warmed up to him quickly. When Takuboku Yukio and Kenta came home from a long day at work they found the rest of their household laughing with a sunny blond in their living room, playing games. They wanted to be reserved towards the bane of Konoha, but luckily, they succumbed to the charm of the young Uzumaki and realised that they shouldn’t have listened to those poisonous rumours spread about the boy.

Once it got late enough to go to sleep Jiro’s parents allowed Naruto to stay for the night. While getting ready for bed Jiro got stopped by his mum.

“I’m not happy you went behind our back to be friends with Naruto, but I am sorry for listening to the rumours, he is a kind boy and I’m happy you’re his friend.”

Jiro just gawked at her as she left, it was the first time he got scolded and praised at the same time. At least he could bring Naruto over now.

...

On Wednesday that week Jiro made his way to the Yamanaka flower shop for his meeting with Inoichi. He said so to the girl at the counter who went to fetch Inoichi-san while he looked at all the flowers. When he got let into the office, he didn’t know what to expect would happen but Inoichi san just sat him down and gave him a glass of water.

“So, how have you been feeling the past few days. Do you understand what happened?” Was how Inoichi started.

“I don’t think anything changed for me, only Uchiha I interacted at any point is Sasuke and he is still in our class, he looked sad and angry the last few days but that’s not very different from his regular behaviour.” Jiro said. “I’m not sure I understand everything that happened, but I know its different than what I was seeing on the night.”

“That is understandable, thanks to your visions what you saw did not happen. From what we understand after your interruption, Shimura Danzo decided to take the whole situation into his hands because he believed Shisui-kun betrayed the village. He took Naruto and was planning on making it look like the Uchiha clan took him to justify his actions.”

“Are you allowed to tell me all of this?” Jiro said when Inoichi paused for a moment.

“Well, I’m not forbidden from telling you… and if we want to make an order of your ‘special memories’ it is important to know what cannot happen anymore because of them.” Was the reply. “First you need to learn how to properly meditate. Then we will have two ways to do this. Either I will be asking you questions while you focus on the specific memories or I perform a mind-walk and then we sort it together. Do you have a preference?”

Jiro thought about this for a moment. “I think I would prefer the mind-walk option if it doesn’t lend me in a hospital.”

“That’s why you need to learn to meditate, that will make it easier for your mind when I perform the technique.” Inoichi said with a small laugh. “Good, let us start, we will meet every Wednesday until we figure out what to do with your situation.”

And so, life continued almost the same. Except there were fewer Uchiha in the village and the police now accepted non-Uchiha shinobi. After three months of weekly meetings Inoichi decided to only meet when more memories surface because most of them are still inaccessible.

In the academy, Jiro helped Naruto with subjects he struggled with and Naruto helped Jiro get over his fear of spars. They also continued the fuuinjutsu lessons and club with Iruka sensei. Naruto excelled at this. Only bigger change was that Uchiha Shisui sometimes decided to join them. Either when they trained on their own or when they were at Iruka’s apartment. Turned out Iruka and Shisui were genin teammates together with someone they call ‘crazy snake lady’ but refused to introduce her.

For a long time, Jiro didn’t get any new visions, nightmares, and headaches so he only met Inoichi once Before he was ten.

Then during one of the fuuinjutsu lessons he was reading a book about advanced storage seals when he came across the world jinchuriki. The chapter talked about the nine biiju and Mito Uzumaki sealing the Kyubi in herself and things just clicked. When he got a minor headache, he knew he was right, and he would have to go to Inoichi. But at that moment he felt victorious because he figured out Naruto’s secret without looking into it, as he promised, now just to inform the others.

“Um… Iruka sensei?” he started “You remember how you made us promise not to look into Naruto’s big secret?” At this he had the attention of the whole room. Iruka and Shisui exchanged a look and Shisui got up to activate Iruka’s privacy seals.

“Did you break the promise?” Iruka asked with disappointment in his voice.

“No, I promised not to look into it but still consider everything I learn anyway. I didn’t have to look into it, this book that you let me read had the answer. Well, kinda.” He showed the book to Iruka open on the page about jinchuriki and mentions of Uzumaki Mito. “I also didn’t promise not to tell Naruto when I figure it out.”

“When, not if? Shisui laughed.

“Well, am I right Iruka sensei?”

“I can’t answer that question without lying or breaking a law, so I’ll leave you to decide if you’re right” Iruka sighed out after a moment.

Shisui laughed even more at this. “What in that sentence doesn’t prove him right?”

Iruka shrugged and they all looked at Naruto who was uncharacteristically quiet. Jiro took the silence in the room as a sign to start talking.

“Naruto, have you ever noticed a seal on your body when you mould chakra? I would guess somewhere on the back or belly.” Naruto didn’t say anything but stood up, took his t-shirt off and put his hands into the ram seal. He stood in front of a mirror and they all saw as a seal appear on his belly. It was beautiful in a way, complex beyond anything Jiro understood, but elegant in a way that he could appreciate thanks to the lessons with Iruka.

Naruto just stared into the mirror with a look that said he thought he’s an idiot for never noticing before. “How did you know?” he asked Jiro.

“Well to not break any rules” Jiro said with air quotes. And turned the book towards Naruto. “I think you are following in the footsteps of your clan. And we know your mum died on the day you were born. This book says that a jinchuuriki dies if the biju is removed from the seal. Lo and behold you were born on the same day as the kyubi attack.” He looked into Naruto’s eyes before continuing.

“A biju cannot be killed, yondaime defeated it but didn’t kill it… He sealed it… Into his own son to protect the village.” Jiro turned to Iruka and Shisui who just looked on their hands but didn’t say anything.

“I think I need to be alone for a moment” Naruto said as he put his clothes back on. Jiro tried to stop him, but Naruto can be way to fast for him when he tries.

‘Damn, I need to get faster.’

“I am getting a feeling I need to talk to Inoichi san about this” Jiro said to Iruka and Shisui

“I will try talking to Naruto” Iruka decided “ Shisui, you should probably let the Hokage know.”

They all went their own way after that. Jiro felt like he did something wrong but couldn’t think of what, Naruto needed to know and it’s just another secret in the scheme of things. Not even a well-kept one.

The talk with Inoichi was awkward but the mind-walk revealed some information that wasn’t known before. Jiro was quite happy he could’t remember the mind-walks. But also, he knows he would know the truth if someone brought it up.

Sometimes he thought about what he did in the previous life to be reincarnated, or if everyone around him is reincarnated and they just didn’t have to deal with invasive memories.

Naruto was back to his cheerful self when he came to academy next Monday, after classes when they were alone, he asked if Jiro will now hate him for being whatever he is, but Jiro just grabbed his shoulders and levelled a look between them.

“Ask that again while looking at me!”

“Will you…” Naruto started but Jiro didn’t let him finish.

“No! Naruto I won’t! you’re my best friend, my only real friend. Would you hate me if I was the one asking?”

“NO! I couldn’t hate you, dattebayo!”

“See, I can’t hate you either, I don’t understand seals as well as you do but I know the difference between a storage scroll and a kunai it holds.” Jiro finished and hugged Naruto instead of waiting for him to say anything else.

Things went back to normal after that week except for the increased number of pranks pulled in the village; but Jiro enjoyed the chaos so he helped Naruto getting supplies.

Not much happened until the end of the academy year when Naruto decided to take a shot at the graduation exam, together with Sasuke, who somehow became Naruto’s rival without Jiro noticing. Naruto didn’t pass and sulked for about a week; more because the Uchiha passed than because he didn’t.

Naruto still couldn’t make a simple bunshin, which was odd cause he was amazing in all other ninjutsu they learned. They could see the Uchiha walking around the village with his team and it always made Naruto whisper curses towards Sasuke. He was on a team with a pale boy rescued after the Danzo Incident, as it became known in the village, and an older boy with white hair and glasses that Jiro noticed around the hospital. Jiro found the team weird for some reason but nothing substantial enough to justify a visit to Inoichi, yet.

…

They were now 12 and the graduation exam was coming. Iruka didn’t have enough time to continue their fuuinjutsu classes and club this year but Naruto still learned on his own and showed his new ideas to Jiro. They practiced and learned together but there was one thing Naruto simply couldn’t do even after all the practice and it started getting stressful. They were walking to their usual training spot and Jiro was thinking hard trying to figure out how to deal with Naruto’s “bunshin problem” when he noticed Shisui and Itachi getting dango.

“Shisui-san, Itachi-san!” he decided to get help from a deferent source. “Do you have a little bit of time by any chance?” Jiro asked as Naruto fist bumped Shisui and waved at Itachi.

“Sure, dudes” came from Shisui “And please stop with the -san already. What do you need?”

“I was wondering if you could have a look at something with your sharingan when we train.”

“Ok just let me pick up our order and we’ll see if we can help” Shisui said with a wink.

…

“So, what is it that you wanted to check out Jiro-kun?” Itachi asked once they settled where they usually trained.

Jiro just pointed at Naruto. “He has a bunshin problem.”

“COME ON! I said I’d figure it out!” Naruto tried to argue, slightly offended but Jiro knew he didn’t know what to do anymore.

“Well, what is the problem?” Shisui jumped in.

“That’s what we don’t know” Jiro continued despite the looks he got from Naruto. “I was hoping that sharingan might help us uncover that.”

“Hmm… OK” said Itachi and his eyes turned red with three black tomoe. Jiro saw sharingan before, but it creeped him out whenever he saw it anyway.

“Let’s see what u got.” Was Shisui’s way to make Naruto show them the bunshin technique.

They observed as Naruto tried multiple times, but the clones always turned out wrong. Jiro joined in to practice too, he struggled with the technique when they started learning it but trying to help Naruto with it made it easier to use. He still thought it was useless though.

“I believe I know what the issue is.” Proclaimed Itachi after a few minutes. “Can you show me the leaf sticking exercise, with as little chakra as you possibly can while still making it stick?”

Naruto sent him a weird look but complied.

“Aaaah, I see what you mean.” Screamed Shisui and palmed his fist. “Naruto do you know how much chakra you have?”

“It can be measured?” Naruto tilted his head to the side as he asked this.

“Not easily, but with sharingan we should be able to at least estimate it. Now, Naruto-kun focus as if performing the henge but instead of giving the chakra a form just push as much as you can into the technique” were Itachi’s instructions.

Naruto changed his stance and followed the instructions.

The only reaction was Shisui’s surprised whistle.

“Jiro-kun please do the same and you too Shisui.”

Both Jiro and Shisui did as Itachi said and waited for the verdict.

“Shisui, how much chakra would you say you have?” Itachi asked.

“A bit more than an average jounin I think.”

“Jiro-kun, you have about a quarter of Shisui’s reserve, which is good for a pre-genin. However, Naruto-kun, you have about three times as much as Shisui.”

Jiro and Shisui’s jaws dropped at this and Naruto celebrated.

“Yatta! I knew I’m awesome, dattebayo!”

“It’s not all good Naruto-kun.” Itachi stopped Naruto from jumping in glee. “Because of this, your chakra control is incredibly difficult, and you might never be able to perform genjutsu or medical jutsu. And the simple bunshin technique might also be impossible.”

This brought the celebrations to a stop as Jiro and Naruto remembered that it is a compulsory jutsu for graduation. Luckily Shisui stopped their sulking.

“You should talk to Iruka-chan and let him know what we learned here today. He might find a way for you to graduate without the bunshin technique.”

“Ano sa, are there other bunshin techniques other than the simple bunshin?” Narutos question was a good one but Jiro didn’t pay much attention to the answer because he got a familiar headache, strongest in the last four years.

They continued training after that and the Uchiha teenagers gave them some useful pointers for their taijutsu. On the way back to the village Jiro took a different route to stop by the Yamanaka flower shop on his way home. And found Inoichi at the counter.

“Hello Jiro-kun, long time no see. Here to buy flowers?”

“Good afternoon Inoichi-san, not why I’m here but I will get some for my mum. I’m here to schedule an appointment.”

“Oh, getting headaches again?”

“A nagging one started today, and I think going to the graduation exams would be safer without a headache.”

“I should be free tomorrow just after the academy. See you then?”

“Sounds great, see you tomorrow.”

That night Jiro got reminded of the first dream he ever head connected to his memories. And again, saw a ridiculous number of Naruto all around Mizuki-sensei. It later changed into the man from his dream after the Danzo Incident doing stupid stuff all around and singing stuff like “Look at all the cannon we have Fucked” and “I’m skipping to Haruka Kanata cause, I don’t remember the first one” He didn’t like it because he preferred when people thought he didn’t swear. Anyway, this time he remembered as much as he could to bring to Inoichi-san.

He started the meeting with Inoichi-san with the training session from the previous day and the dream, before they did the mind-walk. He still couldn’t remember details of what Inoichi saw but whenever he said something Jiro instinctively knew what he was talking about. When he mentioned this to Inoichi they realised that what his past-self called canon was about to start. That meant that he would be getting more of the memories out. They decided on regular sessions again, once a month if possible and additional emergency sessions if the memories hit strongly. However, Inoichi warned him that their discussions might also become more limited if whatever he saw during the mind-walks could affect village security. Or potentially Inoichi might even block some memories from Jiro’s mind.

The rest of that session, however, was discussions of Mizuki-sensei and if he was the same as in the memories. From Jiro’s experiences he thought he was the same. But because there wasn’t enough evidence he couldn’t be immediately restrained. In any case, Inoichi would bring it up with Nara Shikaku and the hokage.

“Ne, Inoichi-san, why don’t we let it play the same way? Naruto needs a clone jutsu other than the simple bunshin so if we just don’t tell anyone it might play the same way, and could prove or disprove a lot about my “memories”, Right?”

Inoichi thought about it and decided to put this option in front of the others in the known.

…

Last few weeks leading to the final exam went by very fast and Naruto still didn’t know if he would get special circumstances for his bunshin problem. Iruka helped them with paperwork to get it approved for Naruto to learn a different bunshin and even managed to push it ahead in the timeline.

The nerves were getting on Naruto, so he decided to pull the greatest prank ever only two days before the exam. Jiro helped him get enough supplies without asking what for to keep possible deniability or however it was called. When he got out of his flat the day Naruto planned the prank it was clear what the paint and ropes were for when he looked at the Hokage Monument. It was really the greatest prank ever.

When no one called Jiro to talk about Naruto and the exam, he started to hope they went with some variation of his plan and not just forgot about Naruto.

He got his answer in the morning of the exam. Nara Shikaku who came to see his son off, casually stopped by Jiro.

“I guess you don’t play shogi. You have interesting ideas; I wonder if they work. I guess we’ll know soon. Come around someday if you want to learn some shogi.” With that Shikaku left. And Jiro was standing in front of the academy trying to control his emotions. He felt like he was betraying Naruto by letting him go through this whole ordeal.

‘I doubt an all you can eat night at Ichiraku will be enough of an apology for Naruto’ were Jiro’s last thoughts before the start of the exams.

Towards the end of the day, they were waiting for individual ninjutsu exam in front of Seno-sensei, Iruka-sensei, and the damned Mizuki-sensei. When it was almost Jiro’s turn, he stood in front of Naruto, rubbing his shoulder.

“I can’t stay waiting for you after the exam. Sorry. I promised mum I would make is home as soon as I finish so we can go visit dad and brother at the building site. You can come there, and you can have dinner with us though. They’re working at the new Uchiha clan compound.” Jiro said, hoping Naruto would pass and the whole plan would fail.

“What if I don’t pass though” Naruto said so quietly that it surprised everyone in the room.

“Nah, you will! I bet they will find a way for you to be ninja.” Jiro said with confidence and got called in merely seconds later.

Jiro passed, he was happy, but he couldn’t smile as he walked home. He thought about Naruto and how he might be disappointed and how Mizuki slithers into his despair to manipulate him. He would have to work with Naruto to control his emotions. If that was even possible.

He put the hitai-ate on, as he got close to home, together with a smile that could pass as real.

He didn’t lie about the things he told Naruto and he told his parents that he might join them if nothing else happens. He also hoped to see Naruto when they leave from the building site, but unfortunately instead of Naruto, there were sirens calling all higher-ranking shinobi to action. The increased activity was seen all around the village, but no one knew why. He was still waiting for him as they ate their dinner. He decided to go and look for Naruto after diner. He was making his way to the Hokage tower fearing the worst but decided to go via Ichiraku in hope that it all already ended, because the shinobi activity suggested that action was over.

It turned out to be a good decision. Naruto was there with Iruka-sensei eating ramen, with Iruka’s hitai-ate proudly on his forehead. He smiled and hurried to join them.

Naruto retold the story almost exactly as it played in Jiro’s memories until the moment when Mizuki dropped the fox bomb at which Naruto laughed into his face and told him that he knew and he wasn’t an idiot. He got surprised by the revelation that Iruka’s parents died in the Kyubi attack, but Iruka told him he didn’t blame him for it when he shielded him from a Fuma-shuriken. Luckily, in another divergence from Jiro’s memories an ANBU in a weasel mask kicked it away before it hit. And together with Naruto’s clones the three of them (or a thousand and three, depends how you count) beaten and restrained Mizuki easily and sent him to the T&I. This granted Naruto a unique field promotion and an official apology about the slow process of paperwork.

Jiro was happy about it turning all right but he also hoped the village wouldn’t follow his suggestions ever again.

They had a week off before team assessment and apprenticeship options reveal. Jiro and Naruto decided to train as any other week but otherwise rest and enjoy being kids for a few more days. Naruto also spent a some of those days cleaning the Hokage Monument because using paint that goes off with rain is useless if there is no rain. Jiro also witnessed a discussion between Naruto and Iruka about seals that could change weather. Jiro was sure that the Naruto and Iruka could create one if they worked together but Iruka refused to break the laws of nature too much, for some reason.

After the week, Jiro made it to the classroom early to see the reaction of the class once Naruto came in. Most of them mistakenly believed that the blond didn’t pass. For some reason, a lot of kids still called him ‘dead-last’ even though he had been keeping his marks in the middle of the class ranking for the last three years, Jiro made sure he at least attended the tests and Iruka threatened to stop their fuuinjutsu classes if he didn’t get at least some good marks. Also trapped him in a barrier with only textbooks a few times. When they talked to Iruka-sensei after the exams they realised that Naruto is probably on the same level as Iruka, in all other seal types other than barriers, already which made Iruka pout and Shisui laugh for almost an hour.

Naruto was one of the last ones to come in, and the reactions did not disappoint. Questions of why was he there, claims that he shouldn’t be there, and of course a singular “troublesome” from a seemingly sleeping Nara. Jiro might even miss this class one day.

Naruto stood straight in the middle of the class and proclaimed how they should never underestimate the future Hokage and to a chorus of eye rolls he sat next to Jiro where they exchanged a fist bump.

There were 29 students in the class so at least two would not be assigned to a team but immediately put onto an apprenticeship and if any teams fail than others would be joining them. Iruka sensei informed them that there are only 9 apprenticeships available this year to those who fail a team test plus the two that were already assigned, so others would join the genin corps or had to look for and apprenticeship themselves.

Iruka-sensei started with those two who got an apprenticeship. Iwaki Yuna got an apprenticeship with a Tokubetsu jounin specialising in infiltration, and Akahige Toru got an apprenticeship with the barrier division. This wasn’t surprising as Toru sometimes joined them in Iruka’s fuuinjutsu club.

Jiro was slightly surprised, because he expected the village to put him into an apprenticeship somewhere where they could use his ‘memories’ as much as possible; but now, he was getting assigned to a team. It might still happen if he fails his team test though. He looked at all his classmates. He knew that what he “knew” is not possible anymore, because Sasuke graduated early. Naruto might still get put on a team with Sakura and if they just replaced Sasuke with the new rookie of the year it would be Seiha, a younger kid rescued after the Danzo Incident. But also, Naruto wasn’t the dead last this time around, so Jiro didn’t actually know what to expect. He preferred it that way. Knowing what’s about to happen is an advantage but not a reliable one because the world is already different than what his ‘memories’ suggested; he needed to find a better name for his situation.

So, when the team assignments started Jiro paid attention. Teams three, four, nine, and twelve were still in circulation so they would get skipped.

His theory about the village ignoring his visions (?) go proven when Sakura was put on team six with Seiha and Takeshi, the dead last of this year. And then the biggest surprise came.

“Team seven will be under Hatake Kakashi and consist of Uzumaki Naruto, Moriya Tsubaki, and Takuboku Jiro.”

So, he’s been put on Naruto’s team. Naruto was beaming and hit Jiro on the back.

“Yatta! We’re on the same team. Just wish Skura-chan was the third one.”

One look towards their third teammate proved she heard it and wasn’t happy.

“Just don’t say that in front of Moriya-san please” Jiro said with a gulp as a shiver went down his spine.

Naruto froze and slowly turned towards their third teammate. Meanwhile they barely noticed as the rest of the teams were assigned. All the clan children were put on team eight and ten, with ten being the new iteration of the legendary Ino-Shika-Cho trio.

Only when they were the only three people left waiting for their sensei it dawned on Jiro that the sensei is the same as in his special intel (?) and although he didn’t know much about him, he got a feeling it was going to be a long wait.

While they were waiting Naruto decided to jump from desk-to-desk brainstorming trap ideas (read: prank ideas) Jiro was reading a book he found under his brother’s bed, and Tsubaki was quiet but Jiro noticed that she was very much annoyed. Jiro talked to Tsubaki a few times during the academy but when Sasuke was in their class she spent most of her time with other fangirls. She calmed down once he left but that just meant that Jiro knew even less about her than a year ago. After almost two hours of waiting, he got bored of the book; it was a bit boring and the female characters were only there for their bodies apparently.

“So, Moriya-san, now that we are supposed to be a team, I guess we should try to get to know each other.” Jiro tried to start a conversation. “I spend a lot of time with Naruto, but I don’t know much about you.”

“Um… like, what do you mean? Like, do mean how I fight, or, like, what I do in ma free time?”

“I have not thought about it that much I just wanted to say something because I’m bored, I guess.”

“Well, I like pranks, and this got to the point when our new sensei definitely deserves one.” Was Naruto’s way to put all attention on himself. He grabbed the eraser from the board, made sure its as dusty as possible and wedged it into the door.

“Oh, come on Naruto, I know you can do better. This is not elaborate enough for you.” Tsubaki snorted when Jiro said that. “I’ve seen what you can do with enough time to plan. And, let’s be honest, looking at how long it’s been, time is something we have.”

“I don’t think we should be pranking our potential sensei” Tsubaki said but got up to join the boys’ planning anyway.

As they were looking around the room on what they could use the doors slid open and they saw the eraser hit the top of a head full of spiky silver hair.

“Ok, I take it back, it was elaborate enough.” Jiro and Tsubaki just stared at their new sensei while Naruto laughed loud enough for Kumo to hear him.

The man stroked his chin before saying anything. “Hmm… How shall I put this? Based on my first impression I’d have to say… “

‘He definitely likes drama’ was the only thing on Jiro’s mind as he was waiting.

“… I hate you. Meet me at the roof.” And he was gone in a shunshin.

“What are the apprenticeship options for failed teams again?”

“We are not failing!” was Naruto’s reply to Jiro’s, somewhat sarcastic, question as he stood between his teammates and pushed them out of the classroom.

…

When they got to the roof, Kakashi was leaning against the railing and so they sat down in front of him.

“Now, I’d like you all to tell us a little about yourself.”

“Like what?” Tsubaki asked and exchanged a look with Jiro.

“… You know, the usual, your favourite things… what you hate most… dreams, ambitions, hobbies, things like that.”

“Help us here, sensei, you go first. Show us how its done.” Naruto prompted.

“Oh… Me? My name is Hatake Kakashi, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t feel like talking about his likes and dislikes. My dreams for the future are none of your business…but anyway I have lots of hobbies.”

Jiro liked this man already for this but also felt like they were doomed because he would not tech them anything.

“Now, it’s your turn. Starting with you on the right.” He pointed to Naruto who sat on the other side of Tsubaki. Jiro saw Naruto’s smirk and leaned in to whisper a translation for Tsubaki.

“Me, right?! My name is Uzumaki Naruto! What I like is instant cup ramen. What I like even better is when Iruka-sensei treats me to ramen at Ichiraku.

*The ramen part is true but also pranks and fuuinjutsu lessons with Iruka-sensei*

“What I hate is the three-minute wait after I pour in the boiling water.”

*He hates when people judge him without getting to know him first… also waiting for ramen to cook*

“My dream is to one day become a Hokage and make Ramen the official food of Konoha!”

*He wants to be Hokage and people to acknowledge him*

“My hobbies are… pranks and practical jokes, I guess.”

*His hobbies are training and gardening, what he said… and reading surprisingly*

Kakashi sweat-dropped and run his fingers through his hair. “Next!”

Tsubaki looked at Naruto and to the disappointment of both boys answered Kakashi’s question honestly.

“My name is Moriya Tsubaki, I like animals, like, especially the venomous ones, and BBQ. I hate when people, like, mix up poison with venom… and cooking. My ambitions and dreams are to become a poison specialist and at least a Tokubetsu jounin. My hobbies are, like, flower arrangement and romance novels.” Tsubaki finished with a faint blush.

“And last!”

Jiro looked at Naruto before starting. He saw him do the same he did for his introduction.

“My name is Takuboku Jiro, I like not talking about my dislikes and dislike talking about my likes. Especially with someone I don’t know. I have dreams and ambitions for the future. I might even try to achieve some of them. My hobbies are to spend time doing my hobbies.”

He imagined Naruto said something in the form of *he likes sweets, training, and messing with his brother. He hates seaweed and talking to people he doesn’t know. He dreams of proving to his family that being a shinobi is a worthwhile career and to change some of the village rules that he finds stupid. His hobbies are reading, and baking* but this was Naruto so it might have been an argument about ramen superiority over all other foods instead.

“I believe we understand each other now.” Was Kakashi sensei’s only reaction. “Formal training begins tomorrow. We’ll be starting with a survival exercise. So, I’m giving you a chance to chicken out now.” Kakashi laughed.

He said it all with a smile that was only indicated via his eye and Jiro wondered how someone could be so expressive with less than a quarter of their face exposed. If he could only learn one thing from this guy it would be exactly that.

Kakashi’s face took a one-eighty turn, seriously how expressive would he be with more face, and leaked a tiny amount of killing intent.

“The test we’re about to perform has a 66% rate of failure.”

He gave them the instructions about the test and turned to leave.

“And don’t have breakfast before-hand unless you enjoy throwing up.”

Once Kakashi was gone. Jiro asked: “Um… should we try and plan for this together?”

...

They decided to go to Jiro’s house to plan, the rest of his family was out of the village with work so no one would interrupt them, and it had more space than Naruto’s apartment. They decided to ignore Kakashi-sensei’s suggestion to not eat breakfast because if he was as late as he was today it wouldn’t matter anyway. Their plans made Jiro realise how much of a disadvantage it is to come from a civilian household. Tsubaki lived with her active shinobi mum and spent a lot of time with other shinobi when her mum was out of village.

That was how she learned a lot about poisons and fighting with poisons from her mum’s girlfriend that used to babysit her. On the other hand, Naruto and Jiro had only Iruka-sensei’s fuuinjutsu lessons and few rare occasions that Shisui found them during training. He needed to seriously hope for Kakashi to be a willing teacher if they pass, otherwise he would never get strong enough to protect his family and friends. It all depended on how they would perform on Kakashi’s test.

Tsubaki went home after dinner and Jiro went with Naruto to pick up his supplies because they would stay at Jiro’s for the night.

Although they decided to ignore the suggestion to not eat breakfast, Jiro was too nervous to eat properly in the morning. Naruto was his usual and basically vacuumed everything Jiro didn’t finish. They packed a small lunch with some extra snacks and made it to the meeting spot five minutes early; Tsubaki was already there. They were meeting in a clearing in a training ground near the main Konoha cemetery. Three tall stumps in the clearing resulted an easy decision about where to meet and wait. The rest of the training ground was covered in a thick forest that could provide easy cover.

“Good morning, Moriya-san, did you eat breakfast?”

“Morning Jiro-kun, Naruto-kun. Like, I had a small breakfast, yes. You know, you don’t have to call me Moriya-san, Jiro, we are supposed to be, like, teammates after all.”

“Hey, you two, what do think, will Kakashi-sensei be late again, dattebayo.” Naruto said after he stopped yawning.

“Probably, I’ve heard rumours that he is, like, always late.” Shrugged Tsubaki.

“I wonder if he’s just hiding in the bushes observing us?” Jiro though without realising he said it aloud.

As they were waiting, Naruto was as energetic as ever, Jiro continued reading his brother’s book; it started to get really weird and people were suddenly naked all the time; he didn’t really like it, but he was intrigued. Tsubaki was sharpening her kunai with a manic look on her face and even Naruto didn’t try talking to her after she almost hit him with said kunai after he tried for the first time.

After two hours of waiting, they started to stretch and hoped that Kakashi would show up soon. When he showed up three hours after his set meeting time with a smile and a “Yo!” Jiro was not surprised at Naruto’s loud “YOU’RE LATE” and Tsubaki’s flying kunai. Jiro didn’t even see him move but he was smiling at them, the kunai suddenly spinning on his finger.

Kakashi put an alarm clock on top of one of the stumps and turned back towards them.

“I set the timer to go of in two hours. I have here these two bells and two lunches. Your challenge is to steal the bells from me before the timer goes off.” Slowly Kakashi took turn peering into the eyes of everyone in front of him. “come at me with the intention to kill or you’ll never stand a chance.”

Naruto suddenly took out a kunai and got ready to attack, but before he could even make a single step, Kakashi was behind him, holding his kunai hand and pointed the weapon towards Naruto’s neck.

“Not so fast, I haven’t said you can start yet. Now let’s see if you’re worth my time.” Kakashi said as he forced Naruto to drop the kunai. “Now… Ready… GO!” and before they could blink, he was in the middle of the clearing reading a book.

Jiro panicked for a second that he would have to steal his brother’s book back but realised that it was Kakashi’s own copy and the one he brought was still with him. He started to run toward the trees to hide and plan when he noticed Naruto proudly standing at the same spot ready to attack; so he changed directions, grabbed Naruto by the collar and dragged him to the forest with him.

“You were not thinking about attacking him head on, were you?”

Naruto at least looked a little sheepish.

“We don’t have a chance against him on our own. We need to find Tsubaki-san and come up with a plan.”

“I agree.” Came from behind them, and if it wasn’t Tsubaki’s voice Jiro would probably react in a stupid way. “Naruto you said, yesterday, that you’re, like, good with traps, right?”

Deciding a course of action took them longer than they hoped it would but once they agreed Jiro handed a large stack of exploding tags to Naruto and left to prepare his part.

Kakashi was still reading his book when Naruto came out of the bushes and glared up at him from distance.

“So, you decided to come on your own anyway?”

“I came out for a match worthy of the greatest warriors.” Naruto got louder with each word as he started running toward Kakashi. The older man didn’t even blink. Naruto started with a punch aimed toward Kakashi’s blind side but got blocked easily. He followed swiftly with a kick and a punch from underneath but Kakashi did not even look away from his book as he kept dodging or blocking with ease. After two more kicks and a few punches. Kakashi was suddenly crouching behind Naruto with hands in the tiger seal pointing at Naruto. With a spark in the eye that even Jiro could see from his hiding spot and a scream full of killing intent, he rocketed his hands towards Naruto. And hit him… in the butt?

“Konohagakure’s most secret and sacred technique!!! ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF DEATH!”

Jiro never wanted to learn a technique more in his life.

As the ‘technique’ hit its target Naruto immediately turned into smoke, and from behind the smoke a bunch of kunai flew towards Kakashi. If he thought that some of them were aimed very badly, he would realise his mistake when the exploding tags attached to them exploded all around him. The plan was a go.


	4. We all need therapy

While a ridiculous number of Naruto clones circled the clearing and bombarded Kakashi with even more ridiculous amount of exploding tags, Jiro was avoiding traps they set with Naruto. If everything worked as they planned, Kakashi would move to the trees and to avoid traps, head towards the place where Tsubaki and Jiro were waiting. And while Tsubaki attacked with poisoned weapons, Jiro would try and sneak to grab the bells.

This would give Naruto time to rest a little and set more traps. The only poison Tsubaki was allowed to use so far was a laxative and they didn’t really believe they could injure an elite jounin, but hopefully at least he would put enough attention on Tsubaki.

Jiro heard that explosions moved from the clearing to the trees, which meant Kakashi set off at least one trap. Thanks to fuuinjutsu lessons with Iruka-sensei Jiro and Naruto had accumulated more explosive tags than any genin should ever be allowed to have but it also meant that there probably wasn’t a safe tree in this forest now.

Jiro found Tsubaki where he expected and hid in the bushes. Stealth was the only physical class Jiro was better in than Naruto and managed to be the second in the class overall, so he was quite confident and excited.

Kakashi did indeed appear in a tree near there. Before he had time to move on, Tsubaki entered the fight with volley of shuriken. She jumped next to Kakashi with a round kick and a kunai in each hand. She was aiming for hands and legs but Kakashi parried each blow with his own kunai. While Tsubaki was attempting fast strikes to keep Kakashi’s attention Jiro sneaked behind him and launched for the bells.

Before he got close enough though; he was flying through the air toward a tree. Before hitting the tree, he realised that Kakashi grabbed his arm and thrown him. Jiro managed to get to his feet soon after hitting the tree and didn’t feel like anything was broken. He hoped it at least gave opening to Tsubaki to hit Kakashi with poison.

He was proven wrong in few second when Kakashi stood in front of him and Tsubaki was flailing around behind him fighting with a non-existent target.

“Genjutsu.” Said Kakashi before reaching for something in his weapon pouch.

Jiro got into a defensive stance before he noticed it was the book he had before. Well, the only other plan they had left was to get Kakashi caught in one of the traps. So, Jiro just sighed and attacked Kakashi. At least he wouldn’t feel like he did nothing.

Jiro started with a low kick that Kakashi jumped over easily, followed by a few strikes aimed from bellow, and a kick aimed at Kakashi’s middle. When nothing landed, he flipped back towards the tree and used it as a board to launch himself at their teacher. He grabbed Kakashi, but the man just closed his book and turned into smoke. As much as Jiro liked Naruto’s shadow clones, he did not like his opponent using them.

Jiro couldn’t find Kakashi’s presence anywhere near him but before he could even consider moving to find him, he felt the ground below him move as a pair of hands grabbed his ankles and pulled down. Within a moment only his head was sticking out of the ground and Kakashi was standing in front of him.

“Ninjutsu.” He said before leaving.

Jiro blew a stray hair away from his face and tried to figure out how much time they had left. He felt like he should have expected this.

After few minutes he heard rustle of leaves and Naruto showed up.

“Real or clone?” Jiro asked and Naruto shrieked and jumped away.

“Clone… how did Kakashi make a talking head out of you?”

Jiro sweat-dropped. “He pulled the rest of me underground.”

“Oh, so he didn’t cut your head off. Good.” The clone said with a nod. Jiro considered for a moment if that technique also gives the clone only half of a brain in addition to half of chakra.

“Why are you here, shouldn’t you be helping the original?”

“Boss got caught in Kaka-sensei’s trap, so he sent a few of us to check on the two of you. No idea what he’s doing now.”

“Oh… it looks like we’re failing quite spectacularly. Do you know how I can get out of this?”

The clone started to dig around Jiro with kunai and the earth loosened enough for him to wiggle out of the hole. When he got out, they looked for Tsubaki with the clone. Before they found her the clone suddenly dispelled. Jiro found Tsubaki on the forest floor staring into nothing. He managed to break the genjutsu but as they were looking for Naruto the alarm rang.

They got into the clearing and saw Naruto tied to one of the stumps. Kakashi was waiting for them with a grim expression. He didn’t say anything until they were sitting next to Naruto though.

“The tree of you…” Kakashi said and paused for way too long. “…Are hopeless. More schooling would be pointless… None of you will ever be shinobi!”

The world felt like its crumbling around Jiro. He stared at Kakashi, frozen, without any idea what to do. Tsubaki tried to somehow argue but didn’t get to say much before Naruto started screaming about how he can’t do that. Tsubaki joined him and Jiro finally thought about what Kakashi said. He remembered what he read in shinobi regulations when his dad tried to pull him out of the academy to work for him. Jiro had found that academy students need a good reason to be pulled out and once graduated they have to serve the village for certain time. But Jiro didn’t want to think about rules, so he just joined Naruto and Tsubaki.

“Maa, maa… At least you’re passionate … Ok I might give you another chance.” Kakashi said with a wave of a hand. “You can try to get the bells again after lunch. I bet you’re hungry by now.” He got three stomachs growling in hunger as an answer. “Good. Jiro-kun and Tsubaki-chan get to eat a lunch I brought each. But under no circumstances are any of you to feed Naruto or you automatically fail. I am the rules here! Got it?”

Jiro just stared at his lunch after Kakashi left. He searched around looking for any signs Kakashi might be close, when he didn’t see any he got up and looked at Naruto.

“Why are you tied up anyway?”

“I managed to attach a fire seal to his book and he didn’t like that at all, dattebayo.”

“Good!” Jiro said and extended his chopsticks towards Naruto. “Now, eat!”

“What? But you’re not supposed to feed me, or we fail.” Naruto said staring at the food.

“He is right, like, as much as it is bad for him to be, like, hungry when we attack Kakashi-sensei, we can’t just break an order like that.”

Jiro looked at Naruto and Tsubaki in turn before saying anything. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Some rules are too stupid to be followed, and this order definitely deserves to be broken.” Jiro pushed food to Naruto’s mouth to stop him from interrupting him. “Plus, even if he fails us its not the end. Naruto, you absorb ninjutsu like a sponge, all the ninjutsu specialists should be fighting to get you as an apprentice, and already you are better in fuuinjutsu than most people. Tsubaki-chan, your chakra control is second to only Haruno in our class and you already know a lot about poisons, getting an apprenticeship in a hospital or with a genjutsu specialist should not be any problem for you.”

Both Naruto and Tsubaki were watching Jiro without adding anything.

“And I would rather we leave today as friends without any major injuries than got destroyed by an elite jounin, for that I think it’s better Naruto isn’t hungry. At least his growling stomach won’t give away our location” Jiro finished with a smirk. Tsubaki sighed and picked up her chopsticks towards Naruto too.

“I guess you’re right. I think we could make, like, a good team. But yeah, Naruto you look like you could eat me later if we don’t feed you now.” Tsubaki said with a laugh.

Naruto looked somewhere between crying from happiness and being offended but just smiled as bright as ever and accepted the food.

Before they could continue Kakashi appeared in front of them and showered them in killing intent.

“You…” Kakashi said glaring at them from above.

“Pass!” His expression changed in an instant and he was smiling at them at their eye level.

“WHAT?!” was the shared reaction of the group.

“A ninja needs to look underneath the underneath. Those who break the rules are trash…” Jiro tensed at this. “But those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash.” After Kakashi said that he untied Naruto and made them follow him to the edge of the training ground next to a Stone with names engraved on it.

“These are the names of those who are recognised as heroes by the village.” Naruto perked up and looked like he wanted to say something to this but before he could Kakashi continued. “It is the memorial to those who died in the line of duty. My best friend’s name is also carved on here.” This stopped Naruto and brought the mood of everyone down.

“I’ve never passed a team before. They all just did exactly as I told them and ignored their teammate.” Kakashi smiled at them. “You showed decent teamwork and looked after each other. So, I’m giving you one last chance to quit. If you decide to stay, I will put you through hell and you will be wishing you would have left when you could.”

The three of them exchanged looks and turned to Kakashi. Naruto stepped closer to him and with a thumb pointed at his heart proclaimed what they all though.

“You are not getting rid of us that easily! You better teach us how to be the best ninja, so we don’t end up un that stone, dattebayo!”

Jiro and Tsubaki nodded and were more motivated than ever.

“Good, we’ll be meeting every morning except Sunday at 7 to train and do missions. See you tomorrow! Dismissed!” Kakashi said and left.

“So, anyone wants ramen, dattebayo?”

“Ichiraku?” Jiro asked and when Naruto nodded, they all headed towards the ramen stand that Naruto frequented.

Once they all ordered and were about to start eating Jiro thought about what they did earlier that day and realised something. “Um… Naruto? How many explosive tags did we use for traps today?”

“Hmm…” Naruto thought for a moment. “About 150?”

“And how many has actually gone off?”

“About 25?”

“Should we tell someone about all the primed exploding tags in the training ground?” Tsubaki joined the conversation.

Naruto smiled a smile that sent shivers down Jiro’s spine and replied. “Nah! It’s a training ground, it’ll just add some spice to someone else’s training.”

And that was how the legend of an exploding training ground was born. Even years later there were unexpected explosions whenever someone other than team 7 used that training ground. The detail that Naruto and Jiro added exploding tags every time they had some extra, was never confirmed and neither was that Iruka might have also been adding his own tags.

That night Jiro had dreams about a silver-haired boy in a mask. He saw him loosing everyone he ever loved and closing himself away from the world. He woke up with more respect for his new sensei and a hope that his team would be able to help their sensei too. But first he wrote down notes that he would need to bring up on his next meeting with Inoichi.

…

The days after they become a team flowed relatively easily. They would meet up around seven in the morning, wait for their sensei for at least an hour, then start training. Afternoons were reserved for D-ranked missions which Naruto loved to complain about. Kakashi-sensei was a slavedriver and pushed them to their limits, but still spent most of the time reading the same book. About a week in, Tsubaki brought the book up during a break.

“I asked my mum about the book and she said to, like, stay away from it, like, only perverts read it or something.”

“Yeah, I read it to find out what my brother reads, and I can confirm it’s nasty.” Jiro said and thought for a moment. “Do you think Kakashi sensei knows we had sex-ed at the academy?”

“Probably not? Why?” Tsubaki asked but Naruto was the one to respond.

“I think Jiro is planning a prank, dattebayo.”

“Just, act like you missed health classes.” Jiro said and got up. He walked closer to Kakashi and put on the most innocent face he could.

“Um… Kakashi-sensei?” He started and Kakashi didn’t even look up from the book.

“Anything wrong, Jiro?”

“I couldn’t miss that you always read that book, so when I found it in my brother’s room, I read it too, but I don’t understand some things that happen in it.” Naruto and Tsubaki joined them before Jiro continued. “Especially the scene that starts at page 69. Could you explain what the characters are doing there?”

Kakashi sighed and turned to the mentioned page. He read the page and started blushing. “Umm… Y-you s-should ask your p-parents that.”

Jiro shrugged before replying. “I tried but they forbade me from talking about the book.”

“And I don’t have parents that I could ask” Naruto injected himself into the conversation. “And you’re our sensei, dattebayo. And you’re always reading the book so you must be an expert!”

“Could you, like, read the page out loud before explaining so we, like, all know what we’re talking about?” Tsubaki joined.

What continued was the most awkward attempt by Kakashi-sensei to not stutter too much while giving a birds and bees talk while his student tried their hardest not to laugh.

“You said he loves her, but they just met and until then I though he’s in love with his rival. So why is he with her instead of him?” Jiro knew that sexuality was not restricted in any way among shinobi, but he still wanted to mess with their sensei. Kakashi actually relaxed when he started explaining sexuality and gender politics to the team so although it didn’t have the expected reaction it provided an insight into their sensei’s mind. And Naruto probably never had anyone talk to him about this even when he was developing his sexy jutsu he didn’t want to discuss it with Jiro much. This talk led to Kakashi realising they were messing with him at the beginning, but it was still quite productive and they definitely got closer as a team that day.

…

Kakashi read the book a little less in front of the team since then but it had the unfortunate side effect of him paying more attention to the team, which meant more training.

Jiro almost forgot about his appointment with Inoichi because of training. He remembered just as they were getting ready to start D-ranks for the day. “Oh, Kakashi-sensei, I can’t do missions today, I have an appointment with Inoichi-san in less than an hour.”

“Why are you going to Ino’s dad, dattebayo?”

“Therapy.” Was Jiro’s only answer.

“What’s that?” Naruto asked and tilted his head to the side.

“Ask Kakashi-sensei, he should know what it is cause he needs it.” Jiro said and run to make it on time. He did not look back to see the reaction of Kakashi sensei but heard Naruto asking.

…

When he got to the Yamanaka flower shop, he found Ino at the counter.

“Hi, Ino, I have an appointment with your dad.”

“Oh, hi Jiro… sure I’ll let him know.” Ino said and when she returned, she continued a conversation. “So, what are you doing now? Did your team pass?”

“Yeah, we did, so, training and D-ranks almost every day. Is Wednesday your day off?”

“Nah, we just train in the afternoon so I’ll be gone before you’re finished probably. You have any juicy news about your team for me?” Ino asked and leaned on the counter with a sweet expression. Luckily, Inoichi saved Jiro by showing up at that point.

“You can come in now Jiro.”

“Thank you!”

“Come on dad, I wanted to get some gossip on another team first.” Ino pouted as they left.

Once in their office they meditated as usual before Inoich asked anything.

“So, anything new?”

Jiro explained his dreams about Kakashi-sensei and some concerns he had.

“I feel like the dreams show up whenever I meet someone, or when important something is mentioned.”

“Hmm… how about I mention some names and upcoming event before we do the mind-walk to see if it triggers something.”

Jiro nodded and got back into meditation. Inoichi started by naming his team, Kakashi-sensei, Hokage-sama, all his other classmates, living Uchiha Jiro met and the people they worked closely with. He also mentioned a few places around the Fire Nation that were probably linked to upcoming high-profile missions, before mentioning the Chunin exam. Jiro’s mind was getting full of visions and couldn’t wait for Inoichi to start the mind-walk.

When he came back to his senses after the mind-walk it was late evening and Inoichi had a troubled expression on.

“Is something wrong Inoichi-san?”

“It looks like we triggered a lot of memories before the mind-walk so it took almost four hours to sort it out and I have a lot to bring to the Hokage and the others. Do you remember what I saw today?

“Fragments, same as usual, nothing clear. I will probably remember most of it when I meditate or in dreams.”

“It is probably better for you to not dwell on most of it, but I will ask Shikaku to talk to you, he is better at figuring out what is important and what needs to be classified. The village should be able to confirm or deny what we saw and deal with it without you worrying.”

They ended the session shortly after as it was getting quite late. Jiro did not expect Kakashi-sensei to lean against a wall around a corner from Jiro’s home.

“That was a bit low, saying I need therapy, Jiro.”

“Don’t you?” Jiro said only then realising that it was probably quite hurtful.

“That’s not the point, why do you think I do?” Kakashi asked and the Jiro felt guilty for saying what he did earlier that day.

“I am sorry sensei.” Jiro said and bowed, he felt like he really messed up and was afraid of making his sensei hate him. “You know why I go to Inoichi-san and I couldn’t come up with a good excuse. Will you please forgive me for being disrespectful towards you?” Jiro was afraid he would be asked to leave the team or something worse, he didn’t expect Kakashi to put his hand on his shoulder and squeeze lightly. He definitely didn’t expect Kakashi to smile at him when he looked up.

“I would prefer you didn’t belittle me in front of the team, but I am kind of proud of the way you deflected the question. Why do you think I know why you went to Inoichi-san though?”

“Well, you were there that night it started, and I was told everyone that was in the Hokage office that night knows what happened. I only realised it was you under one of the masks after you became our sensei, but I probably know more about you than you’d like.” Jiro wasn’t sure it was a good idea telling Kakashi that he knows about his past, but he developed a liking to his sensei in the past few weeks. Kakashi let go of Jiro’s shoulder but didn’t say anything. “I think talking to someone about your life could help you. The memorial can’t answer your questions or tell you that there are people who care about you, sensei.”

“Y-you shouldn’t know these things.”

“I shouldn’t but I do. Inoichi-san does too, he has seen it all in my mind.” Jiro said looking anywhere but Kakashi’s eyes.

“I should go…” Kakashi said, but before he could leave Jiro grabbed his sleeve.

“Please, don’t leave our team because of me, sensei. I don’t want to make you relive your life, but I think Naruto needs you and you’re his only connection to his father. I tried making him talk to you about it but… but I thinks he’s scared you’d leave our team if he did.”

Kakashi stared at him before disappearing in a shunshin.

That night Jiro dreamed again about the life of a silver-haired boy again, but this time he saw the tragedies up close. He woke up with tears in his eyes, afraid he had said too much the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure where to go with this. I don't want to do wave but I want naruto to have his talk with Haku. I might send them on a different mission or send them to wave but change it quite a bit.


	5. Can you burn a bridge before building it?

Team seven met on their usual spot, at the usual time, ready to wait for their sensei. When Kakashi broke the record for the longest wait, Naruto and Tsubaki got annoyed, while Jiro got nervous that he really did mess up.

“He would tell us if training was cancelled, right?” Tsubaki asked after another half hour of waiting.

“Yeah, he’s always late but never missed training before, dattebayo.”

Jiro was sitting down and plopped his chin on his knees. “I saw him last night, and I… I might have messed up.” His teammates looked at him with confusion. “I was feeling weird after my appointment with Inoichi-san and I said some things to him that I probably shouldn’t have.”

“But, like, why would that make him not come to training?” Tsubaki voiced.

“I don’t know, but I feel like I messed up.”

“Yatta, we have to find him to figure it out, dattebayo!” Naruto grabbed Jiro’s and Tsubaki’s hand and dragged them towards the village proper. “Where could a very recognisable masked man hide in Konoha?”

They crossed the village but did not find any clue about where to find Kakashi. Shortly, Tsubaki got tired of just walking around. “We need to take this as a mission! What would we do if we got a mission to track, like, a missing pet?”

“Ask the owners about the pet? But this is a jounin, not a pet.” Jiro said with a raised eyebrow. “And we don’t know anything substantial about Kakashi-sensei.”

“So, we ask other jounin and chuunin!” Tsubaki shrugged. “Let’s start with the gate guards, if he left the village they would know.”

The gate was staffed by a duo that could be often found exactly there; Jiro didn’t know their names though. Luckily, it looked like Naruto did and so he went and asked. He learnt that Kakashi did not leave the village and if anyone knew where he is it would be someone they described as a green beast or one of the other jounin-sensei of their year.

“Team ten trains in the afternoon, so Ino might still be in the Yamanaka flower shop.” Jiro remembered from a previous conversation with Ino. They made their way to the flower shop and she was, indeed, still there. She explained that her team would meet in front of the flower shop in about an hour. Meanwhile, they decided to split and then meet back there to reconvene.

Tsubaki went to the shinobi quarter hoping to find where Kakashi lives. Naruto formed ten clones and sent them to the training grounds on the edges of the village. Jiro went to the check the markets and busy shopping streets.

When they got back Jiro came back empty-handed but Tsubaki learnt that the green beast would probably be someone called Maito Guy who is also a jounin sensei of an older team. Naruto met team eight, but their sensei didn’t have any clues.

Sarutobi Asuma, jounin-sensei of team ten, wasn’t much help either, he told them that if Kakashi didn’t want to be found he would not be found. They decided to go back to their usual meeting point and look for him from there again.

“We need to make him teach us tracking, dattebayo!” Jiro agreed with Naruto’s statement but was still afraid that Kakashi wouldn’t train them anymore.

“Where have we not looked yet?” Tsubaki asked. “Have you gone to our usual training grounds, Naruto?”

“Hmm… don’t think so.” Naruto said and scratched the back of his neck.

“Let’s go there now then.” Tsubaki said and headed towards the training ground where they became a team.

After they avoided all the traps in the training ground, they found Kakashi-sensei in front of the memorial stone. He looked like he didn’t move from the spot in way too long and probably didn’t sleep.

“Um… I guess I shouldn’t go to him if he’s there because of me.”

“No! We’re all going!” Tsubaki was the one who grabbed their hands this time and dragged the boys towards Kakashi-sensei.

“SENSEEEI!” Naruto screamed as they run towards Kakashi.

Kakashi turned towards them with a wide eye and immediately looked for the position of the sun like he was trying to figure out what time it is.

“We were worried about you, sensei!” Tsubaki started. “You didn’t show up and we couldn’t find you. Jiro told us that he, like, said some stuff to you.”

Kakashi slowly looked at each of his students before saying anything. “Maa, I guess I got lost on the road of life, again.”

“Doesn’t look like you were going anywhere.” Naruto said but immediately got an elbow jabbed to his stomach from Tsubaki. “Yeah, all right, lost, but we found you now, dattebayo.”

“Soooo…” Tsubaki rolled her eyes at Naruto and turned back to Kakashi. “Are you ok? Do you, like, need us to do anything? You’re coming back to training, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll be training normally tomorrow again. You’ll have to do more to catch up for the missed training today. Let’s take the rest of the day off and I’ll see you tomorrow.” Kakashi said with his signature eye-smile. Then he let out a deep breath and looked at Naruto. “And Naruto, I wanted to talk to you, do you mind staying here for a moment?”

Tsubaki was standing there with crossed arms and raised eyebrow for a moment but then joined Jiro in leaving. “A day off is nice I guess; although we did spend most of it, like, looking for Kakashi.”

As much as Jiro wanted to eavesdrop at the conversation, he decided against it and went home, he had enough stress about loosing a sensei for the day.

…

Kakashi was surprisingly early the next day but went back to his regularly scheduled lateness afterwards. Naruto came to the training one day with a permission from the Hokage to tell Tsubaki about his parents, if she promised (read sign a disclosure) to keep it secret. He told them, that was what they talked about with Kakashi that day. Tsubaki stayed with her jaw dropped so long after the revelation that the boys started to joke about it staying like that forever.

They asked Kakashi to teach them tracking and he summoned his dogs to help with it. Side effect of summoning dogs was that the three genin didn’t pay any attention to their sensei until he threaten to unsummon them.

When the dogs escaped into the trees and the genin were too slow in climbing; the tracking training got interrupted by chakra control and tree walking. In Jiro’s opinion it was the most productive part od their training so far, He enjoyed it and grasped tracking quite well. He didn’t understand why Tsubaki complained about it so much. Naruto struggled with the tree climbing for the same reason as his bunshin problem but managed to overcome it with a few more days of trial and error.

At some point while Naruto was running at trees Jiro noticed that he could feel how much chakra Naruto poured into his feet. When he told Naruto to adjust it a little, Kakashi noticed and took Jiro aside to test something.

“When did you notice that you can feel Naruto’s chakra?”

“Hmm… not sure, I think I could always tell if someone was close but when you gave us the more complex chakra control exercises it got easier?” Jiro shrugged.

“Ok, I want to try something. Tie your headband around your eyes to blind yourself.” Kakashi ordered and Jiro followed the instructions. “Now try and focus on sensing chakra, I will supress mine and when I let it out, I want you to point where you think I am.”

For the next hour or so Jiro would focus on Kakashi who would disappear and appear randomly to Jiro’s senses. At the end Kakashi explained that Jiro is a sensor type, and he would train him to extend his range and precision. Jiro was excited because he didn’t realise that’s a thing and made Kakashi promise to also teach him how to supress his chakra cause be found it cool.

Overall training went almost back to normal except Kakashi-sensei seemed to avoid Jiro a little outside their sensing training and talk a lot more to Naruto. Jiro was almost jealous, but he thought that he knew why, so he just trained harder and was a bit more polite to Kakashi.

…

The next two monthly meetings with Inoichi were quite eventful, and he had a talk with Nara Shikaku after each of them; one to talk about Orochimaru and the other about the network of fragile alliances that the village maintained. It was more Shikaku trying to make Jiro play shogi while talking and Jiro getting bored by the game and looking for ways to cheat.

When the next session was coming up, he didn’t expect to bring any news from his side. Anyhow, when he got home the night before the session his mum sent him to find his father and older brother who were out with an old friend or something. He found them in a bar that they frequented. He didn’t expect to get a familiar headache when his dad introduced him to his friend Tazuna who was there to get an escort back home. Jiro left with his brother and left his dad to continue drinking.

His dreams were full of snow, big swords and bridges that night. It looked like he had something to bring up to Inoichi-san after all. Now he just needed to hope that Naruto wouldn’t beg for a C-rank mission in the next few days.

Unfortunately, when they got the mission to catch Tora the cat, again, two days later, Naruto did. Catching Tora wasn’t a problem, they learnt after the first time that they just needed a can of tuna and some time for Tsubaki to get close to Tora and the cat would come to them, she really liked the team, and nobody noticed that they spent the rest of the days training with Tora before returning her. Kakashi was the only one who was clearly too much of a dog person to like her.

When Tazuna walked in as their charge, Jiro wasn’t sure if he should refuse. He thought that either the village was already dealing with the problem in wave or the news didn’t get far enough yet. He didn’t want Tazuna to die but he wasn’t sure if he’s strong enough to protect anyone.

Tazuna walked in and looked like he wanted to complain but than he noticed Jiro and wanted to complain even more. “What’s this, a bunch of brats? Are they even ninja? Aah, whatever, I am the super expert bridge builder, Tazuna. I expect you to provide me super protection until I get back to my country and complete my bridge.”

After Kakashi ensured Tazuna that they are indeed qualified for this C-ranked assignment, they each left to get ready for a long mission. Jiro sneaked out after dinner to talk to Kakashi about the mission. He found him in front of the memorial stone again.

“Sensei?” He said from a distance, not wanting to impose on Kakashi’s ritual, Kakashi waved him to come closer though, so Jiro continued when he got closer. “I don’t know if anyone told you about what I talked to Inoichi-san yesterday.” Kakashi just shook his head.

“It’s about the mission. If what I saw is right it won’t be a simple C-rank.” Jiro looked around assessing if there was anyone around and carried on. “There might be a jounin and at least two chuunin after Tazuna’s life. His bridge could cause issues to the crime lord that took control of wave.” Jiro took a deep breath. “We might come across Momochi Zabuza and his accomplices.”

“Getting lost in paperwork looks more troublesome than getting lost on the road of life right now.” Kakashi said and looked up into the sky. “Is anyone on the team in danger of death?”

“I… I don’t know. No? We’re a different team, except of Naruto and you. My situation only tells me one possibility of what might happen.” Jiro also looked to the sky. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to protect anyone.”

Kakashi looked down and put a hand on Jiro’s shoulder. “We’ll see; I’ll go pull some strings to maybe get us some help, but I trust the three of you to follow my orders and survive.”

…

When the team met in the morning, they were all full of excitement. It was the first time leaving the village for both Naruto and Tsubaki, so they were at the gate half an hour early. Jiro was excited for their first C-rank and his talk with Kakashi sensei the night before made him feel safer, so he was also early. Kakashi-sensei surprised the whole team by arriving five minutes early too. He checked how the three of them packed and tried sending Naruto to leave some of the instant ramen behind. Luckily for Naruto, Jiro was carrying extra storage scrolls, so he just put them in and Kakashi gave up.

When Tazuna found them at the gate he still looked unhappy with the team but after a short exchange with Kakashi they left the village. Kakashi gave Jiro a thumbs up when he noticed the boy looking at him nervously. Wave country was four days away at civilian pace so they adjusted to the speed Tazuna could manage for the trip and got walking. The Land of Waves was a small country off the coast of Fire Country, south west from Konoha, almost exactly opposite the direction where Jiro was from, which made Jiro also excited about new places.

“Ne, Tazuna-san, how did you meet my father? We used to live in the opposite direction from Konoha.” Jiro asked unable to control his curiosity anymore.

“We worked on a super project together years ago, probably even before your brother was born.” Tazuna remembered. “We were building a super bridge across the Naka river near the coast to speed up the merchant routes from the main ports of Fire Country to the capital. It was a big project with super builders from all across the fire country and surrounding areas.” Tazuna spoke about the project for the rest of the day and only finished when they stopped to set a camp. Jiro never found interest in his father’s job but at least he didn’t find the talk as boring as the rest of his team.

Next two days went without any incidents and Jiro started to relax thinking Kakashi indeed found help. He was very disappointed when less than a day away from the Wave country he noticed a puddle full of chakra in front of them. He shared a look with Kakashi sensei who blinked at him (it looked like it was meant to be a wink but that is hard with just one visible eye). Tsubaki also noticed because she glared at the puddle as they got closer.

“Did it rain recently?” She asked with a frown.

As if they heard her, two figures appeared from the puddle and quickly wrapped Kakashi sensei in a chain that tore him apart. Jiro expected it and logically knew that Kakashi wasn’t dead but seeing it happen still made him freeze together with the rest of his team. Tsubaki was the first to come back to her senses and threw a handful of senbon on the attackers. That startled Naruto and Jiro enough to move.

Naruto attacked them head on and Jiro fell back towards Tazuna, getting a barrier seal ready. When one of the attacking twosome avoided both Tsubaki and Naruto and jumped towards Jiro and Tazuna, Jiro slammed the seal down and activated the barrier so the attacker slammed right into it without having a chance of avoiding it. Before he could attack again Kakashi knocked both of them out though.

“YOU’RE ALIVE!” Naruto screamed at Kakashi.

“Maa, maa, I just wanted to see who they are after.” Kakashi said and levelled a look at Tazuna.

Tazuna broke down, crying about the situation in Wave, Gato, the struggles of wave citizens, and how he couldn’t afford a higher ranked mission. Kakashi explained to him that there are other ways to gain a support of a hidden village and Tazuna just failed completely to use them to his advantage. He threatened Tazuna to leave him there but gave the team the option to continue.

Naruto was first to say that they should continue, Tazuna’s story enchanted him and his sense of danger was barely existent anyway. Tsubaki wasn’t sold at first but agreed that they should continue, after all Kakashi-sensei is one of the best. Jiro looked at Kakashi and couldn’t tell is he actually wants them to continue or not, but his chakra was completely calm, and Jiro trusted him, so he also agreed to continue. Kakashi took the two attackers away. The younger members of the team joined him for the interrogation, but he sent them away before he finished them off.

They were close to the coast but decided to wait and cross in the early morning when most fishermen go out to the sea. That night Kakashi took the watch right after Jiro and when he came to replace him Jiro couldn’t stop but ask.

“You sent someone ahead of us?”

“Hmm… Maybe.” Kakashi smiled at Jiro. “We’ll see tomorrow, now get some sleep.”

Jiro was starting to understand Kakashi a little recently, but he still wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.

…

The boat ride to the island in the morning was a tense affair. The sea was covered in mist and it was eerily quiet. Jiro kept his attention to chakra all around them but didn’t feel anyone except for Naruto and Tsubaki, Kakashi-sensei supressed his chakra so well that if he wasn’t in the same boat Jiro wouldn’t know he’s there.

They had a lot of expectations about what they would see in Wave, but a dancing crowd was not one of them.

People of the town gathered near the centre and celebrated. Tazuna looked even more surprised that team seven. When they got close enough to see why people are celebrating, they found a head on a spike and people cheering all around them that Gato is dead. Jiro wasn’t sure if the rest of his team is happy that the danger was averted or disappointed that there won’t be more action. Jiro was hoping that the death of Gato was enough to drive his thugs away.

Once they made it to Tazuna’s house they finally got an explanation from his daughter. Gato’s head appeared in the town in the early morning out of nowhere and his thugs were running around and didn’t know what to do. Some of them are locked in Gato’s mansion so something might still happen but a bunch of them were already leaving.

Kakashi decided they would continue as their mission set them to and guard Tazuna until the bridge is done in case there are unrests. In addition to that he also set the team to learn water walking which was supposed to be similar to tree walking but was much more complicated in practice. Naruto was training harder than the other two combined and often left in the evening to practice on a small pond in the forest nearby.

One of these nights after an argument with Tazuna’s grandson he didn’t come back before they went to bed so when Jiro woke up, he went to look for him. He found Naruto near the pond talking to someone.

Jiro could sense that the person was supressing their chakra which meant they were not a civilian. He decided to approach them with a caution. As he got to the clearing, the person started to leave but noticed him.

“One of your teammates, Naruto-kun?” the person asked Naruto.

“Yeah, that’s Jiro. Goodbye Haku, hope to meet you again!” Naruto said and waved at Haku as they left.

“New friend?” Jiro asked once Haku was gone.

“Yeah, they’re about to leave Wave so they were filling up their herb stocks. They woke me up cause I was sleeping here after training yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’m here to find you cause you the two of us are supposed to stay in the house today while Kakashi and Tsubaki guard the bridge. You can take a nap in the house later.”

…

Jiro was helping Tazuna’s daughter, Tsunami, in the kitchen and Naruto was working on a new barrier seal at the dining table when Inari, Tazuna’s grandson, ran in with a panicked expression.

“Gato’s thugs are coming here!” He screamed. “Some of them are going for the bridge.”

“Both of you stay inside and away from the doors!” Jiro ordered. “Naruto? Is that barrier finished?”

“Yep!” Naruto nodded, they exchanged a look and left the house. “Are we staying inside the barrier or out?”

“Out, don’t want to risk all of them going for the bridge, Kakashi-sensei is strong but there is a lot of them.” Jiro said and Naruto summoned three shadow clones who would hold the barrier from the inside. They would activate it on Naruto’s signal.

When the thugs got closer, they could see about twenty of them. The one who looked like a leader of the group started yelling at the two boys.

“It’s this family’s fault our employer is dead before he could pay us so we’re going to kill them and take the island for ourselves. You brats leave now, or we’ll kill you too!”

Jiro didn’t understand why the man was telling them their plans but decided to just get into a defensive stance instead of questioning it.

“None of them are ninja” he whispered to Naruto. “I can’t sense much chakra.”

“Good!” Naruto put his hands into a seal ready to summon more shadow clones.

When the thugs took their weapons out and charged, Naruto summoned enough clones that each thug would have to deal with two, and at the same time it acted as a signal to activate the barrier.

This was the first life or death battle without their sensei watching for both boys and they couldn’t afford to freeze. Naruto headed into the chaos and Jiro stayed back for a moment. Two of the thugs dispelled their Narutos and headed for Jiro immediately after. He reverse-gripped a kunai in each hand and dodged the first strike of an old sword.

He rolled closer to his second attacker who was wielding an axe and slashed his Achilles tendons. The man screamed and fell to his knees. Before Jiro could strike again the first man tried to stab him. He blocked with the kunai and jumped back. The man followed him and tried to slash from below, but Jiro stepped around him, turned a kunai in his hand and stabbed him in the chest. He pulled the kunai out and turned back to the man with an axe.

The man was trying to get back on his feet, but before he could Jiro stepped behind him and slid his throat. Jiro was full of adrenaline, so he didn’t even pause before turning to the other thugs. He noticed the closest one was still struggling with one of his clones, so he took a handful of shuriken and thrown them at the man. He hit him in the back and the clone finished him easily. He could sense the real Naruto further in the chaos.

Jiro attached an explosive tag to a kunai and thrown it into a group of thugs that worked together against the clones. One of the four men noticed and tried to block with his sword but when he deflected the kunai up it exploded in his face. The explosion killed him and injured another of the men but also dispelled a few clones. Two remaining men from that group noticed Jiro at the same time as two other men who escaped their assigned clones.

Jiro took out a few smoke bombs and detonated them as they got close to him. He sneaked around focusing on other senses, while the four thugs slowed down and screamed, trying to lure Jiro out and avoid ‘friendly’ attacks at the same time.

Jiro jumped on the back of one of them covering his mouth and cutting his throat. It seemed that the others didn’t notice so when the smoke started to dissipate, he threw a kunai hitting another one in the shoulder. He really wanted smoke bombs that stay around for longer.

He almost didn’t dodge a mace that would pulverise his skull but instead kicked the assailant to the head when the mace hit the ground and the man let go of it stumbling into a smaller man.

He jumped and hit the man in the chest with both feet. That sent him flying into the other man and both of them fell back, knocking out the smaller one in process.

Jiro had to block a sword from the man with a kunai in the shoulder right after that. He had to block two more times before he managed to grab the kunai sticking out of the man’s shoulder, twist it and pull it out. The man screamed in agony but before Jiro could continue, he was dodging the mace again.

Another strike managed to hit him in the leg as he was dodging. He wasn’t sure if the leg is broken or just hella painful, but he could worry about that later. Next strike was coming from the side. Jiro put hope into his leg and jumped. The mace moved millimetres under his feet. He spun to hit the man on the head with a blunt end of a kunai, knocking him off. He did the same to the man with a hole in the shoulder. He looked around, ready to fight again and saw Naruto tying up all the men who were still alive, no one fighting anymore. He carefully tried walking on his leg and when he didn’t feel like the leg was broken, he moved towards Naruto.

“Any injuries?” Jiro asked Naruto. The blond boy was focused on tying up everyone and didn’t reply. “Naruto?” Jiro came closer. “Are you ok?” still no reaction.

“HEY! RAMEN BOY!” Naruto finally turned to Jiro. “Are you injured?”

“No.” Naruto replied quietly and the look in his face troubled Jiro.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… we… I killed a man today, Jiro.” Naruto looked at him with a sad look on his face and the whole situation finally dawned on Jiro too. He sat next to Naruto and looked at his hands.

“m… me too. We did.” Jiro could see the face of the man he stabbed when he looked at his hands. “But… is this our job now?”

Jiro noticed that Naruto wasn’t looking at him. “Let’s tie up those who are still alive.”

They tied everyone who was still breathing and pulled the bodies of those who were not away from the house. They remembered the academy lessons that talked about what to do with dead opponents but going through with the process was completely different.

They worked in silence and when no new thugs appeared when they were done, they went to check up on their charges. Tsunami and Inari were in the main bedroom hiding away from the windows and doors. Inari glared at the blood on the boys but didn’t say a word. Tsunami thanked them and clearly avoided looking at the blood stains.

They went back out to keep an eye on the surroundings and a few minutes later Kakashi-sensei appeared. He was covered in blood and looked ready to kill anyone in his way. He calmed down when he saw the boys standing over a bunch of thugs in various stages of consciousness.

“I see you had your share of Gato’s leftovers too.”

“looks like it, the family is safe inside.” Said Jiro. “What are we going to do with them?” He pointed on the living thugs.

“We’re not just killing them, right?” Naruto asked Kakashi. “We’ll put them on trial or something?”

Kakashi looked at Naruto and took a long minute before replying. “Sure, the people of wave will figure out what to do.”

“Is Tsubaki all right?” Jiro asked Kakashi afterwards.

“She is ok, she’s coming back with Tazuna and should be here any moment now.” He put his weapons away and went to see how the boys dealt with the dead thugs. “It might not be what you want to hear but good job guys.”

After Tsubaki and Tazuna returned, he sent the man inside asked Naruto to guard the house and took Jiro and Tsubaki to deal with the bodies at the bridge. There were more than twice as many thugs at the bridge than at the house and no one was left alive.

When they came back to take the living thugs to the authorities, they only took six of them as three of the tied man did not survive their wounds.

The rest of the evening Kakashi sensei took each of them aside on their own to talk about the day. Jiro went to Kakashi last.

“How do you feel about today, Jiro?” Kakashi started and Jiro wanted to remark that he did know what therapy was but didn’t say it.

“I don’t know.” Jiro tried to put his feelings into words somehow. “I know it’s what we do as ninja, but I didn’t like it.” He looked ahead to the evening sea. “It was easy, and that is scary. I don’t want to be a killer, but I want to be a ninja, and ninja are killers.”

“We are, and I want to say it gets easier, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. We did what we did today because if we didn’t, someone we care about might die.” Kakashi looked at Jiro. “You know what I did, and I don’t like that because I would rather forget myself.” Looking at the sea he continued. “Remember this day and what you felt. When you loose count of how many bodies you left behind, remember that you don’t like doing it. It’s a job, it’s what we’re good at. We are prepared to do this from the first minutes at the academy, but it doesn’t mean it’s good. We all are fighting for something. If you’re fighting only for the village it gets easy to forget they were also human.” Kakashi went quiet after this.

“Thank you for fighting for us today, sensei.” Jiro looked at Kakashi. “I am happy you are our sensei, and I will fight for you and the whole team too.” Jiro left Kakashi at the porch and returned to the house.

After that day the bridge building moved much quicker. Naruto went to help with his shadow clones and Jiro sometimes joined too. When the bridge was finished the villagers named it the Great Freedom Bridge and team seven was one of the first groups to cross the bridge before they left to go back home with a promise to visit whenever they are close by.


	6. There and back again

The trip back to the village was much quicker at the speed Kakashi-sensei pushed the team. They only stopped to rest for a single night late after sundown about two thirds of the way to the village. The genin were exhausted, but glad that they would be home the next day after five weeks away. As excited as they were, Jiro was thinking about what he would tell his family about the mission, how they would react to what he did, but mostly he just wanted to see them.

When he got home, instead of his family he found a note. They were letting him know that his dad and brother got a commission in the eastern Fire Country and mum went with them to support them. They would be gone for at least three months. They left three weeks ago, and Jiro thought that they must have known about the project before he went for the mission, but they just didn’t tell him anything. He spent a lot of time with Naruto and knew that the boy was lonely, but now he felt like he understood him more than ever.

After few minutes of silent re-reading of the note, Jiro rubbed his eyes and threw the crumpled note away. He pushed his emotions away to stay rational. He made a list of what he’d need to get. He shopped for Naruto when the blond would get kicked out of shops, so Jiro knew what a single boy his age needs. Well, he would need less instant ramen than Naruto. Jiro was lucky that he has been helping his mum in the kitchen since he was a kid and knew how to cook a little.

Team 7 met the next day to let Kakashi-sensei help them with a mission report. He was surprisingly helpful and when Jiro noticed Naruto’s smirk later that day, he realised that Iruka-sensei would learn that Kakashi actually knows what to do. Jiro remembered Iruka-sensei’s stories about notorious jounin who always messes up his reports in the most annoying ways. Naruto was the one who connected the dots and realised the person from the stories was Kakashi-sensei about a month into training with him.

For some time, they continued training and D-ranks as before the Wave mission. Jiro met up with Inoichi for a short session because he missed one, but mostly just talked about the kills he made. He would have to send the rest of his team to a Yamanaka too.

The team was surprised when Kakashi-sensei asked for another C-rank about two weeks later. They were given a delivery mission to a town at the border with the River Country.

The mission went smoothly with no interruption, but the team was anxiously awaiting it to go badly the whole time. Kakashi must have noticed it because the day after they came back, he tried to explain to them that what happened in Wave was not normal. Jiro wanted to believe it, but unexpected turns of event were a daily occurrence around Naruto, so he kept his hopes low.

It wasn’t until his next session with Inoichi that Jiro realised three C-ranked missions are a minimum requirement for a team to attend chuunin exams. Inoichi told him that after the village realised their plans for the upcoming exam match Jiro’s memories, they tried to change some of it, to either confuse those with intel or at least make it fair if his team attends. He met with Nara Shikaku again the day after and they discussed how changing some detail might still end in the same results. Jiro was mostly just confused about shogi, again, but he understood that although according to his memories the changes that occurred might have stopped Orochimaru from leaving Akatsuki the intel pointed in the direction that he did it anyway. However, the main thing Jiro took away from that meeting was that Shikaku accepts moves in shogi that are only legal on a technicality. Jiro still found the game boring, but he enjoyed looking for loopholes in the rules.

Jiro started to understand Naruto’s Ramen obsession during the absence of his family; it was cheep and easy to make, especially after a day of training and D-ranks. He still cooked but, since Naruto ended up staying over more often than not, it was their most common meal. His family wasn’t supposed to return until after the chuunin exams, so he at least didn’t need to stress about them too much and his house became team seven provisional headquarters of sorts.

Kakashi asked for another C-rank exactly a month before the chuunin exam but still didn’t mention anything to the team. This time it was an escort for a small caravan heading to the land of Hot springs.

They were expected to be back within two weeks but Kakashi informed them that they would take longer on the way back and approach it as a training trip so they should bring extra supplies. In addition, Jiro was supposed to keep his sensing sharp during the whole trip to recognise and memorise the signatures of his teammates.

The caravan they were escorting was a small trading business specialising in foods and spices. Their leader was a large man with a smile that could rival Naruto and skin even darker than Tsubaki. It wasn’t that uncommon to Konoha but Tsubaki could easily pass as a Kumo Kunoichi. Because Konoha was settled relatively recently by clans and civilians from all over the Fire Country and beyond people of any and all skin colours could be found here. A lot of Konoha residents sat somewhere between ‘spends enough time on sun to have a skin colour’ of people like Jiro to ‘basically translucent’ of the Uchiha clan. But there were also the Nara clan and a bunch of minor clans and families with darker skin.

Altogether they had six civilians, two carts, three horses, and a dog to protect. Normally this would be a mission for a chuunin squad, but it was an established rout with only an uncommon disturbance, so the leader of the caravan didn’t mind a genin team.

Early on, Naruto started chatting to the clients. Most of the people were somehow related to the leader of the group. He was the owner of one of the carts working with his wife and two children, and the second cart was owned by his younger sister and her wife. The two youngest members were twins only a year or two older than team seven. One of them tried flirting with Tsubaki and the other with Naruto who was too oblivious to notice.

Jiro noticed Tsubaki getting annoyed and tried to listen what she would do but Kakashi had him focus on the chakra signatures of the caravan and anywhere in his range. It took him two days to feel differences in the chakra of people around him and a week into the trip he was finally capable to focus both on sensing and doing anything else. By this time, the twins were scared of Tsubaki and Naruto had no idea why.

Eight days into the journey Jiro sensed weak chakra signatures hiding in the forest ahead of them. Kakashi had Naruto make four clones, two of them would stay with the original Naruto and Tsubaki guarding the caravan while the rest would go with Kakashi and Jiro to scout ahead. While the clones couldn’t supress their chakra, they were not as easy to sense as Naruto himself in case there was a well-hidden ninja ahead. Jiro supressed his chakra as best as he could and followed Kakashi. They found ten hidden bandits along the road ready for an ambush. Kakashi sent one of the clones back with instructions on how to prepare.

Naruto was to henge enough of his clones into each member of the party and move ahead while Tsubaki stayed back with them hiding until the bandits are dealt with. Kakashi, Jiro and the remaining clones would meanwhile prepare traps to ambush the bandits once they attempt to ambush the caravan. Even before Naruto got into view, Kakashi silently bound and gaged three of the bandits.

Naruto was a good actor so when the caravan came into view even Jiro would probably fall for it if he didn’t know. When the bandits leapt into ambush the caravan they must have been surprised when every single member of the caravan threw kunai at them with great precision before they even got close, injuring three enough to get them out of the fight. In a blink of an eye Kakashi and Jiro leapt from behind them and knocked out two others. The two remaining were quickly knocked out by two Naruto clones that dropped their disguise. It was over before the bandits could do anything. They bound them all and while Naruto went to get the others from hiding and Kakashi guarded the bandits, Jiro was tasked with finding their camp and collecting anything of note. He found it quickly and stored the few things there in a storage scroll. They would drag the bandits into the closest village along the way and leave them to the authorities there. They reached a village like that before the night fell so they left them there and stayed a night in an inn.

They reached their destination after eleven days without any other incidents and in addition to spending a night in a nice inn, the clients gave each of them a small selection of spices.

They went to bed ready to enjoy a long night so when Kakashi-sensei woke them up at five am he faced three grumpy sleepy kids.

“My cute little genin. We have only ten days to get back so get up, we’re leaving in five minutes.”

“Konoha is three days away at our speed, we have time” Tsubaki said over a yawn.

“Until it’s one day at your speed, your argument is invalid.” Kakashi replied with an exaggerated eye smile. “Get up and out, we’re taking the scenic route so ten days is barely enough for you three.”

They were hopping through the trees at their top speed for the rest of the day as far away from roads as the forests of the Fire Country allowed. Which is far, very far. When Kakashi-sensei finaly allowed them to stop, even Naruto was tired and the three of them stared at Kakashi who looked like he barely went for an afternoon stroll. Jiro had the first watch that night and when Kakashi-sensei took over he was asleep the second he laid down.

After hearty breakfast Kakashi took the team to a river near the camp and stood in front of them.

“Now that we finished three C-ranked missions, you qualify for the chuunin exams.”

In the moment he paused Naruto proclaimed how awesome they are and that they will be chuunin in no time.

“Are you trying to get rid of us already, sensei?” said Jiro and noticed that his teammates just sweat-dropped.

“I didn’t say I would nominate you, just that you qualify.” Kakashi said with a smile. “You three are still useless!”

At this all three of them grumbled in their own way.

“But that’s why we’re here.” He continued slowly. “I want each of you to get better at what you already know and learn a new jutsu before we return.”

“Yes! A new jutsu! I’ll learn the coolest jutsu immediately, dattebayo!”

“Not so quick, Naruto.” Kakashi said and took out three pieces of paper. “First, you will learn what is your elemental affinity.”

Naruto crossed his arm and nodded with a very serious expression. “What is that?” he said suddenly. Tsubaki and Jiro palmed their faces and Kakashi sweat dropped.

“Ask your teammates.” He said and proceeded to give each of them a piece of paper. Tsubaki took the bait and turned to Naruto.

“Chakra is naturally tuned towards a certain element. There are five of them, fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water. The element your chakra is aligned with is easier for you to control than the other four.”

“Well said.” Said Kakashi-sensei. “There’s more to the theory but you can learn that at your own time in the library, we’re here for the practical stuff.” He took a piece of paper too and held it between his index and middle finger. “Now, hold the paper like this and channel a little chakra through it.” As he said it his paper crumpled towards his fingers to an impressed “Ooooh!” from the genin. “This is chakra conducting paper, it will react accordingly to your chakra affinity.” He paused. “Go ahead!”

They all focused on the paper and in a moment, Naruto’s was split down the middle, Tsubaki’s was burning, and Jiro’s crumbled like dirt.

“Interesting…” Kakashi said and stroked his chin.

“What does it mean?” Naruto asked with a confused look.

“You have a wind affinity, Naruto. It’s very uncommon in Konoha, but it’s the same as your father so not very surprising.” Kakashi said and then turned to Tsubaki. “Your affinity is fire, Tsubaki. It’s the most common one in Konoha.” He turned to Jiro last. “It’s earth for you, Jiro. Its most common in Iwa, but there are some earth natured people in Konoha.” He took a moment before continuing. “I’ll give you each a basic jutsu and an element moulding exercise to begin with in the afternoon, now you’re going for a run, put these on.” He said and handed everyone a set of ankle weights. “Try to keep up!” He said once they put them on and took off.

For the rest of the morning, they were following Kakashi more based on Jiro’s sensing than actually seeing where he was going.

By lunchtime they were exhausted, but they were also ordered to keep the weights on until they reach Konoha. Afternoon started by Kakashi explaining the basic nature release exercises to everyone according to affinity. Tsubaki was trying to start a fire with her chakra, Naruto was trying to split a leaf, and Jiro was trying to harden mud into rock.

After sunset they packed and moved, following Kakashi at top speed before dinner and sleep. The next day was almost the same only with added taijutsu and sparing in the morning. Kakashi-sensei only showed them a jutsu on the third day. Tsubaki was learning the fireball jutsu, Naruto was learning wind release: Great breakthrough, and Jiro was learning earth release: Soil explosion, which was basically just a tiny, localised earthquake.

For the next three day they trained all day and moved in the evening. The sseventh day morning started very differently though. Jiro was supposed to have the middle shift, but instead of being woken in the middle of the night by Kakashi he woke up in the morning, somewhere else, tied up, with only his basic equipment.

He was wide awake in an instant and saw Naruto and Tsubaki next to him also tied up but still asleep. The weirdest part was one of Kakashi’s ninken in front of him though. “Um… Pakun? What’s going on?”

“Took you longer to wake up than I expected.” Said Pakun. “I’ll explain once they wake up.” He pointed his paw towards the rest of the team. “Don’t want to repeat myself”

Jiro gave him a questioning look but stayed quiet. He managed to turn enough to reach Naruto with his foot. “Guys! Guys, wake up!” he said while prodding Naruto.

Tsubaki was first to react, stirring a little before noticing she’s bound and snapping her eyes open. “What’s going on? Where are we? Where’s Kakashi-sensei? Pakun?”

Naruto finally opened his eyes slowly after Tsubaki’s little panic rant. “What the hell?” he said and glared at Pakun. “I really hate Kakashi-sensei’s sense of humour, dattebayo!”

“Well, now that you’re awake, Boss told you about the chuunin exam, right. This is a little test from him. First of all, you always need to check your food for poison, always. Second, you have three days to make it back to Konoha, if you make it, boss might consider nominating you for the exam. Try not to die, see ya!” Pakun disappeared in a puff of smoke after he finished.

Jiro was impressed how creative Naruto got with insults and swear words for the next fifteen minutes while they were trying to get out of the ropes. Naruto was ultimately the first to be free of the ropes and help the others.

They started by taking inventory of what Kakashi-sensei left for them. Each had the basic weapon pouch with a single portion of rations and a canteen. Naruto had his emergency sealing supplies and a first aid kit, Jiro had trapping supplies, and Tsubaki had some poisons and extra senbon.

“We need to find out, like, which way to go from here.” Tsubaki started immediately after they put their stuff away. “We need to move quickly even with the weights, and we will need to get, like, food somehow.” Naruto and Jiro nodded in agreement. “Like, Jiro can you sense anything around? Naruto make at least eight clones to, like, send in different directions.”

Jiro focused to stretch his range further. He was paying attention passively for the last week and his range was getting better but when focusing he could almost double it. “I can’t sense anything other than small animals in my range.”

Meanwhile Naruto made nine clones with one of them climbing a tree to look around.

Jiro thought about how they moved since they left the land of Hot springs. “We were moving mostly west, I think. These forests are similar to where I grew up so we might be close to the border with the land of Waterfalls or land of Grass.” Jiro tried to think about the places where he lived before he moved to Konoha.

“Cool, Naruto, send your clones in every directions, look for rivers roads, landmarks, villages or anything really. Tell your clones to dispel when they find something or after three hours. We’ll get some food meanwhile.” Tsubaki said and Naruto complied. He was stubborn but at the same time, he and Jiro both knew that Tsubaki is probably the best at planning.

They caught four rabbits, after preparing and cooking them it should last them for the next two or three meals. Two if they manage to limit Naruto’s appetite, really.

Naruto kept them updated on the clone’s progress. The one that went north dispelled after falling off a cliff thirty minutes in. The south one run into a bear after an hour. West and north-west ones found a river flowing north and the former one followed it until he found the north-west clone and they dispelled together two and half hours in. The rest dispelled after three hours. North-east, East, and South-west didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Luckily South-east found a river and followed it. It was flowing south and presumably there would be some settlement on it somewhere. Meanwhile Jiro noticed birds he remembered from his childhood which with the bear that Naruto met made him almost sure they were in the northern fire country. They decided to follow the river for now. They moved as quickly as they could while paying attention to their surroundings and with weights on.

They stopped every hour to climb a tree and try to see anything in the distance. When they still didn’t see anything but the forest three hours after sunset they decided to camp for the night and Naruto took the first watch.

During his watch Naruto set up some traps for animals which saved them time in the morning as they already had three more rabbits and two squirrels caught. That should last them until they would be back in Konoha if everything went smoothly.

By noon that day they were sure they were going the right direction after Naruto barely stopped them from getting caught in a trap that had Kakashi-sensei written all over it. Literally, there were henohenomoheji on the tags instead of exploding tags, well some of them. The ones Naruto didn’t notice were actual exploding tags. By the nightfall they were partially following the direction they believed Konoha was and partially following the traps. They managed to avoid and dismantle most of them which gave them extra supplies, but they still got caught in a few of them.

When they settled for the night and saw lights from the top of a tree, they were pretty sure they could make it to Konoha by the next night. Even if the light were not Konoha, they would know which direction to take.

Jiro had the middle shift that night and either he was just super unlucky or Kakashi was testing his sensory skills. He quickly woke up his teammates. “There are six chakra signatures coming towards us from the west, no more than four clicks away.”

“Ninja?” Tsubaki asked while getting her stuff together as fast as possible.

“I don’t think so, it feels like summons? Might be Kakashi’s ninken. if the traps are any indication they won’t hold back, much.”

“Naruto leave three clones around henged into us. We’ll try to avoid them. Only sign language from now.” Tsubaki said and Naruto did so after a long yawn.

Naruto had the best senses, so he took the front followed by Tsubaki and Jiro. They tried to not leave any traces suggesting which way they went but they were against some of the best trackers in Konoha; so they set some traps hoping to slow them down at least a little.

They were still in Jiro’s range when Naruto confirmed the clones got dispelled by Kakashi’s pack. It took them only about twenty seconds before they were following the team again, this time even faster. Naruto protested that they should fight the ninken but by now Tsubaki was an expert in arguing against Naruto, so he followed her lead. Jiro was convinced they would have to fight eventually; they just were not fast enough.

When it was clear the pack was gaining on them, they stopped and got ready for a fight. They tried to hide, hoping to ambush the dogs when they reach them. Unfortunately, they couldn’t hide from the noses of the ninken who didn’t even pause and headed directly for their hiding spots.

It took ten minutes to force the first dog out of the fight and an hour before the team could take a breather.

“Was this, like, the longest fight we ever had?” Tsubaki asked in between breaths.

“Yep!”

“Believe it!”

Jiro and Naruto said at the same time.

After tending to their injuries, they realised that the dogs destroyed all the food they had left. It was still night and they were all tired, so they decided to rest before moving again. They had no luck catching any animals in the morning but found edible berries and mushrooms. Moving in the direction they planned the night before, they saw the walls of Konoha just before sundown.

Kakashi was leaning against the guard booth, reading the same book as always.

“Good, you’re here.” He said and tossed them their packs. “Training as usual tomorrow!” he smiled and shunshined away.

The three genin let out a frustrated growl while the chuunin on guard laughed.


End file.
